Hungary After Orbán. Winning Power Is Easier Than Limiting It

When Péter Magyar was sworn in as Prime Minister of Hungary on 9 May with a constitutional majority behind him, the symbolism of the moment was impossible to ignore. Yet electoral victory is only the beginning.

A historic transition and a dangerous moment

After years in which Viktor Orbán appeared to embody the durability of illiberal democracy in Europe, Hungarian voters decisively rejected the political system built by Fidesz. Across Europe, the result was widely interpreted as proof that democratic backsliding can still be reversed in the Visegrad Four (V4) countries through elections. Yet in some respects, Hungary now faces challenges even more complex than those that emerged in Poland after the downfall of the Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice, PiS) party in 2023.

Shared experiences but different realities

As someone observing these developments from Poland, I naturally feel tempted to share lessons from our own experience of democratic restoration after the PiS era. But such comparisons have limits. Every constitutional crisis is deeply shaped by national political culture, institutional history and the balance of political forces. There is no universal roadmap for rebuilding the rule of law. In fact, one of the paradoxes of recent years is that ‘rule of law’ itself has increasingly become a language of political struggle as much as a language of the law itself.

This broader political context is crucial when evaluating the initial signals from the new Hungarian government.