Why an Orbán loss would be a huge win for the EU - and disastrous for Putin and MAGA

It's hard to understate how much vast geopolitics hinges on an election in a country with a population of only 9.6M

Apr 11, 2026

This Sunday April 12th marks the Hungarian national elections, where the incumbent of 16 years straight, Viktor Orbán, is being challenged by a new arrival, Péter Magyar. The latter has swiftly risen to a surprise position whereby he could actually win by double digits and secure a 2/3 majority that brings extra constitutional powers. A Magyar win, on an anti-corruption, anti-elite and gently pro-EU ticket, would be very impactful well outside of Hungary.

Suddenly, the EU could, unencumbered by Orbán’s aggressive vetoes, fully back Ukraine’s defence against Russia right at a time when Putin is seeing battle lines shrinking back to his border. Further, the MAGA movement in the US, right when they are vulnerable and divided over the Iran war, would lose their ally and godfather in Europe - a man who not only inspired them with their Christian nationalist model, but currently acts as a beachhead for the Trump government’s stated plans to undermine the EU by directly supporting populist right parties all over Europe. That double-blow to Putin and Trump would hit back against their joint vice-like squeeze on Europe’s integrity and would secure Europe’s capabilities to rebuild against threats.

Why is Orbán suddenly so weak?

To really get a deep understanding of his political weakening, I would highly recommend you read this superb Substack piece by Palma Poyak. However, I’ll make a slightly different summary here.

Let’s first cover why Orban was so strong for 16 years…

When Orbán first came to power in 1998, yes 1998, his party (Fidesz) did not have an outright majority. Instead, Orbán had to govern through a coalition with smaller right-leaning parties. His majority was therefore fragile and conventional, meaning that had to negotiate policy; he had no mandate to rewrite the system. He then lost power after one term (in 2002) and spent eight years in opposition.

Then, in 2010, he was back, with a vengeance, as Fidesz won 53% of the popular vote. Due to Hungary’s electoral system, this translated into a two-thirds supermajority in parliament. That supermajority is crucial because it allowed Orbán to change the constitution. In fact, in 2011, his government introduced a completely new constitution, which he would amend many times after.

Orbán used his new powers aggressively, to redrew constituency boundaries, reduce the number of MPs, gerrymander, and introduce rules that would help the largest party (his) achieve greater parliamentary majorities from mere pluralities of votes against divided opposition. But he didn’t stop there. The government used its majority to change rules for appointing judges in their favour and expand political influence over courts, officers and regulators. In terms of media, allies acquired many private media outlets and an oft-cited figure is that his allies control 80% of the media in Hungary. The corruption became legendary, but the deeply-rigged system, weak and scattered opposition parties that could not get coverage, and pliant Hungarian population who largely overlooked corruption if life was okay for them, ensured that Orban walked through election after election with super-majorities:

2010: 53% of votes & 68% of seats (super-majority)

2014: 45% of votes & 67% of seats (super-majority)

2018: 49% of votes & 67% of seats (super-majority)

2022: 54% of votes & 68% of seats (super-majority)

However, it all started going bad in 2022:

What happened at the beginning of this term was that the economics started to get suddenly much harder. With inflation hitting 25% and food inflation hitting 40% in this term, Hungarians began really feeling the pain in their daily costs and so began feeling much less forgiving of the vast corruption of Orbán’s illiberal pseudo-democratic state.

Unlike during his previous tenures, across this entire 2022-2026 period, there has simply been no growth:

[Note: This graph copied directly from Palma Polyak’s Substack piece]

Why has this occurred? Well:

Oil. Hungary is very dependent on Russian oil. Two months before Orbán started his 2022 term, Russia invaded Ukraine. When the war disrupted markets, energy prices surged across Europe. For Hungary this meant much higher import costs and also a big strain on government finances due to the subsidised household energy prices. The government, which had long kept utility bills artificially low, had to scale back subsidies. This meant households suddenly faced much higher energy bills.
Inflation and food prices. Hungary experienced one of the highest inflation rates in the EU after 2022 - hitting 25%. This pushed up cost-of-living. Furthermore, both Ukraine and Russia are major exporters of grain and fertilizers. As the war disrupted supply so food prices jumped and food inflation went up to 40% year-on-year.
Dependence on German industry. Hungary’s relationship with the German manufacturing economy—especially its deep integration into German industrial supply chains—was another key channel through which the Russian invasion of Ukraine affected its economy, because Germany, also overdependent on Russian oil saw its manufacturing base take a huge hit.
EU funding withdrawal. In Dec 2022, the EU lost its patience with Orbán’s corruption and formally froze €6.3 billion in funds. This was followed by more freezes of funding totalling around €20-30 billion over the years. Although about €10 billion was released when Orbán undertook reforms. Nevertheless, this hit of cashflow had a hugely chilling effect on Hungary’s small economy and investment into it.
Death spiral of currency weakening. The Hungarian forint came under pressure because investors saw Hungary as suddenly much riskier. That weaker currency caused more expensive imports (especially energy), which drove higher inflation, making Hungary riskier and the currency weaker.

All of this meant that life suddenly got a lot grimmer for Hungarians. And where they had overlooked Orbán’s vast corruption before, they could now see the difference between their lives and what 16 years of Orbán engorging family and friends looked like.

Enter Péter Magyar and the resistance

[Picture taken from the banner on Péter Magyar’s X profile]

Until now, Orbán had not faced a united opposition. Yes, in previous elections the smaller parties tried to club together into multifaceted coalitions to take him on, but that’s not the same as a clear opposition figure.

Péter Magyar, however, didn’t come from the opposition forces - he emerged out of Orbán’s own ranks. Importantly, he had been married to Judit Varga, who served as Orbán’s Justice Minister and was a key Fidesz figure. Magyar himself held positions in state-linked institutions and companies. He was part of the Fidesz elite.

Magyar’s emergence is directly tied to a political scandal in 2024 when the President, and close Orbán ally, Katalin Novák granted a pardon to a man who had been convicted of covering up sexual abuse by the director of a children’s home. This blew the Fidesz party reputation around upholding children’s safety and family values. It triggered public protests, media criticism - and divisions within the conservative Fidesz circles. Novák resigned and Judit Varga, who had countersigned the pardon, stepped back from politics.

One of those conservatives who started speaking publicly was Judit Varga’s ex-husband, Péter Magyar. He gave interviews to major independent Hungarian outlets, where he accused the system around Viktor Orbán of corruption and manipulation. One of his early interviews got millions of views online.

This electrified the political scene, because Magyar was an insider breaking ranks and talking very credibly about how the Fidesz system of corruption worked. Not only did Magyar appeal to disgruntled Conservatives, but because his interviews went viral online, he also picked up huge support from young and urban demographics - the base of the opposition parties.

Magyar quickly capitalised on this, holding a major anti-government demonstration in Budapest on Hungary’s national day (March 15, 2024). Ten days later, he releases an audio recording of his ex-wife, demonstrating corruption. And then in early April he took over a tiny political party, Tisza, and effectively made it his own. That, in turn, got him immediately past registration hurdles and onto the EU election ballots in June 2024, where Tisza won 30% of the vote and 7 MEPs (second behind Fidesz with 45% of the vote and 11 MEPs). It was a lightening rise, making Magyar an MEP himself and securing an institutional base, funding, and also positioning Magyar as Orbán’s leading challenger. With the rise of social media and independent online media in Hungary taking on the dominance of the 80% Orbán-allied mainstream media, Magyar has wind in his sails.

How are the elections looking?

The combined opinion polls are shown below. Note that the range of results is very large with independent and opposition-aligned polls showing Tisza often with a double-digit lead and government-aligned polls showing Tisza trailing slightly behind Fidesz. However, there is no doubt that the battle is between two clear forces, with all other opposition parties having faded to under single digits.

[Graph taken from Wikipedia page on 2026 Hungarian elections]

During the campaign, Magyar has focused on an anti-corruption and anti-elite narrative, alongside local and domestic concerns. He has made clear that he wants Hungary to align more closely with the EU, but has not been passionate on it, just pragmatic.

Péter Magyar has been turning out huge crowds for Tisza rallies across Hungary, often framing it as the countryside rising up against Orbán’s corruption.

Orbán’s pitch has been much more geopolitical, focusing on resistance to Brussels and the EU, asserting national sovereignty, resisting Europe fighting for Ukraine against Russia - and his model of government being on the winning side globally, with Trump’s Washington now aligning with him rather than Brussels. He has also turned of late to specifically painting Volodymyr Zelenskyy as bogyman and an enemy of Hungary.

Zelenskyy and the Druzhba pipeline

To understand why this is, you have to start with remembering that Orbán is close to Putin and heavily dependent on Russian oil. Orbán has been generally very resistant to the EU providing assistance to Ukraine in order to fight Russia. These factors all come crashing together in the Druzhba oil pipeline crisis.

The Druzhba pipeline, built in the 1960s - runs from Russia through Ukraine to Hungary and Slovakia. It’s not just a long underground tube, it has complex infrastructure, with pumping stations every 50-100km that are dependent upon electricity, usually from the national grid. The war in Ukraine has significantly degraded its operation, causing intermittent stoppages, as electricity shortages and direct hits on infrastructure impacted it, starting in 2022. Ukraine has deliberately carried out attacks on the pipeline, saying it needed to undermine Russia’s oil revenue. However, this has angered Hungary and Slovakia, who were so dependent on Russian oil via the pipeline that they got exemptions when the EU, in its 6th sanctions package in 2022, banned most imports of Russian crude oil.

The Ukrainian approach to limiting the oil supply has caused Hungary and Slovakia to join together in resisting later sanctions packages against Russia, as leverage on Ukraine’s behaviour. Then, in January 2026, a key section of the Durzhba pipeline in Ukraine was knocked out by a Russian strike, according to Ukraine. Zelenskyy has refused to repair it, citing dangers of the war and it not being in Ukraine’s interest to do so. Both Slovakia and Hungary have used their veto powers within the EU to go beyond public criticism of Ukraine and attempt to guarantee oil flow, with Hungary being prepared to go further.

The current dramatic standoff started when the EU agreed in late 2025 on a €90 billion loan package for Ukraine designed to keep the Ukrainian state functioning during the war. This kind of funding requires agreement from all EU member states. Hungary signed off on the deal in December 2025, but in early 2026, it refused to sign off on the implementation citing the new disruption to the Druzhba and Zelenskyy’s refusal to fix it. EU leaders saw it as Hungary backtracking on an agreed decision. It’s caused a high-stakes standoff that is ongoing. This is why Zelenskyy’s face is all over Hungary’s billboards, as political posters from Fidesz portray him as the enemy and root cause of both Hungary’s economic woes and Hungary’s risk of being dragged into war, as part of the EU and NATO, against Russia.

The Trump connection and JD Vance’s visit

Orbán’s pitch with regard to the US is very deliberate and consistent. He presents his relationship with Donald Trump, JD Vance and the MAGA movement as proof that he’s not isolated internationally but increasingly aligned with a rising alternative power bloc. Orbán tells Hungarian voters that the global tide is shifting, the US is no longer friends with Brussels but with Budapest, therefore Hungary is well ahead of the curve, not behind it or backwards.

This is why JD Vance’s visit mattered to his narrative. Vance physically showed up in Budapest just days before the 2026 election and campaigned alongside him. Vance got Trump on the phone, also to endorse Orbán. However, most crucially, Vance echoed all of Orban’s campaigning points in order to give them extra weight. He said they came to show Orbán has “lots of friends across the world” and is an “important partner for peace.” This was aimed at counterbalancing the narrative that Hungary is isolated inside the EU. Vance also went as far as to claim the EU had engaged in political interference in the election by withholding billions of Euros from Hungary - and he sought to pronounce that Hungary was doing the right thing asserting its sovereignty, against the EU, on all matters from immigration policy to energy policy and the Druzhba pipeline. Vance very deliberately bolstered Orbán not just as a friend or ally, but lifted up his worldview of national sovereignty over supranational control.

Unfortunately for JD Vance and Orbán, the visit created a lot of noise but showed absolutely no signs of helping Orbán in the race. Rather, if anything, it appears to have hurt Orbán’s chances of winning - which could be quite humiliating for Trump and Vance.

As Hungary heads to the polls on Sunday, it is looking like Magyar’s emphasis on anti-corruption, anti-elite, domestic pain and rural constituencies is working much more effectively than Orbán’s presentation of himself as the successful leader of a new world model of national sovereignty that breaks the EU grip and pleases the most powerful leader in the world.

What an Orbán loss would mean for MAGA

Viktor Orbán occupies an outsized place in the imagination of America’s MAGA right because Orbán was an early backer of Trump and has presented himself as a test case: a democratically elected leader who has aggressively used power to reshape the state, the media environment, and the cultural sphere in favour of a durable nationalist project. When the team around Trump were looking at a potential second term, they were very aware of Orban’s aggressive return to power in 2010 and how he quickly moulded the country to make of it a Christian nationalist nation rigged in his favour.

And it’s not just power. Not only did Orbán swiftly use electoral legitimacy to justify far-reaching institutional change; he also crafted a cultural programme centred on nationalism, migration control and opposition to liberal social norms. These are issues that map closely onto the priorities of Trump-aligned voters. Orbán made Hungary a laboratory for MAGA ideas and then cultivated ties with American conservatives through think-tanks and conferences. He is their outrider.

But Orbán is more than that to them - there are structural geopolitics involved. Orbán is also a beachhead of their preferred model within the EU. That brings destructive and disabling power to an aggressive US government that see the EU more as a rival than an ally. To understand this more deeply, one only needs to look at Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference where he castigated Europe, and the US’s National Security Strategy that followed.

Please look at this excerpt below from that National Security Strategy published in November 2025. If you just jump to the “Europe” part of the National Security Strategy document, you miss an important paragraph in the “Strategy” section under “Principles”:

[Excerpt from the US National Security Strategy, page 9]

This is a very obvious attack on the EU, but also other international organisations like the UN and ICC. It is an announcement that the US, under Trump, does not respect multinational bodies and wishes to engineer a Europe that is comprised of smaller nation states that it can influence directly, rather than taking on a bloc of equal weight like the EU. Trump has, on multiple occasions, expressed his admiration for the UK leaving the EU. For him, Orbán represents another country resisting Team Europe and going it alone, providing a model of how other countries might selectively be broken out of the EU mould and align instead with Washington’s interests. Hence JD Vance’s eager attacks on EU “bureaucracy” when he visited Orbán.

So, if Orbán were to win Hungary’s election, the US would be pouring in extra cultural links, business links, projects, funding and more over the next four year - building Budapest as an alternative bridge to Europe for them, increasingly shunning Brussels. It is their way to undermine, weaken and asset more control over the EU.

However, if Orbán loses the election - this is a humiliation for Trump and Vance. Especially after the desperate attempt of Vance putting himself into Budapest to shore up their guy. It would show that Trump is waning in power and has been shunned by the European country most friendly to them. It will also have dramatically antagonised Europe against Trump and Vance for absolutely no material gain. The other populist right leaders in Europe will take note - and given also that many of them are openly furious against Trump for his illegal and chaotic war on Iran that pushes up prices for everyone - will likely shrink away from Trump dramatically.

This means that the whole Trump-Vance plan to engineer populist right uprisings across Europe to build US levers of control in Europe that can undermine the EU as a rival power… will likely result in the exact opposite - with the US having dramatically fewer levers and less respect right across the continent, weakening US soft power hugely.

Finally, how Orbán comes through this election, win or lose, will be brimming with lessons for Team Trump as they look at their own mid-terms at the end of the year. The cultural dynamics are very similar. Trump is on the ropes over economic consequences of war, with a public hollering about elites and corruption in the form of the Epstein files — and a deep rural cult-like base propping him up but only to a degree, because longstanding allies within the Conservative camp are now calling him out across social media.

What an Orbán loss would mean for Putin

An electoral defeat for Viktor Orbán would matter to Vladimir Putin very significantly. Primarily because of Hungary’s strategic role inside Western institutions, with the ability of Hungary to block EU support for Ukraine - and action against Russia - being absolutely key.

Orbán has been one of Moscow’s most useful interlocutors and agents within both the EU and NATO. While not pro-Russian in a formal alliance sense, leaked phone calls and plans (like plans of a Russian-engineered fake assassination attempt on Orbán to help him in the elections) show that Orbán’s government has very much been a close ally on the operative level. For Russia, his government has consistently softened, delayed or complicated Western consensus on issues such as sanctions, energy policy and support for Ukraine following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This has given the Kremlin a modest but real advantage as even limited dissent inside unanimous bodies like the EU can slow decision-making and dilute outcomes.

The first big hit to Putin would be the EU’s €90 billion loan package to Ukraine. When Hungary blocked the loan earlier this year, the EU made the calculation that Ukraine could survive without it until after the Hungarian election. So Magyar in government would very likely swiftly approve the loan, allowing the EU to give Ukraine the shot in the arm that it needs. The EU may then also wish to revisit the recent round of sanctions against Russia that both Hungary and Slovakia blocked over the Druzhba oil pipeline issue, in the hopes that Hungary is now helpful to the EU and Slovakia does not want to be alone in opposition. The EU would also have extra incentive to help Slovakia and Hungary diversify their energy supplies and thereby allow Ukraine to keep Russian oil restricted, but increase the sanctions on Russia and keep aid to Ukraine flowing.

In short, the removal of Orbán from his recalcitrant blocker position on EU action against Russia would very quickly allow Europe and Ukraine to upscale its pressure on Putin at a very sensitive time for Russia on the battlefield and economically. It could really help tip the balance.

What a Magyar win would mean for Hungary and the EU

This is where the size of the win matters. A win for Tisza of a simple majority would absolutely be seismic (given Orbán’s run of four super-majorities in a row) - however, Magyar would be entering the PM position in a Fidesz-structured political, media, administrative and judicial ecosystem… with a Fidesz-written constitution. All of that would be stacked against him and he would have to engage in very clever politics with the current set of wider power. What if those powers deliberately make life difficult for him, hoping to engineer a return to power of their old master in four years or sooner? Also, what if Magyar wins only by a small amount, leading to the elections being contested and the whole national apparatus being overwhelmingly Fidesz-aligned? What happens then?

A 2/3 majority, ie a super-majority, which was previously unthinkable for a rival in this election is suddenly looking like a possibility. That would change everything. The election would be harder to dispute. Appointed officials and regulators all over the country would know Magyar has the power to axe their positions and so would be much more incentivised to be on their best behaviour and actively constructive. Magyar would also have the ability to really tackle corruption and structures/ processes that the EU has seen as unlawful. That, in turn, means that the EU would then be in a position to release the rest of the €30 billion that it had withheld in Orbán’s 2022-2026 term, alongside the new funding due for the 2026-2030 term. This constitutes vast amounts of funding for an economy the size of Hungary’s. That in turn would begin attracting in new investment.

For the EU, a Magyar win, especially a super-majority, would bring manifold benefits. Firstly, it likely allows the EU to fully back Ukraine. Although Magyar has not pledged to allow the €90 billion loan package to Ukraine, it would be very surprising if he didn’t, given his interest in Hungary working well as part of Team Europe and the likelihood of the EU embracing and helping him out of sheer relief. Secondly, it hopefully stops a rot inside the EU where nation states can slide into autocracy and potentially even dictatorship. That would be a disastrous precedent for the stated purpose of the Union. Orbán losing in part because of withheld funding due to corruption disputes would evidence that the EU has anti-autocracy safeguards build into how it works. Thirdly, a Magyar win would shun the Trump-Vance model of undermining the EU by backing populist right “illiberal democracy” models. That is important soft-power security. Finally, with Orbán gone as a persistent thorn in the EU’s side, there is very probably appetite and a window of opportunity for the EU to revisit its model which allows any of its individual members to veto actions of the rest. If the countries are willing to re-evaluate that fundamental encumbrance, without a blocker like Orbán in the mix, then the EU gets a lucky break to fix a very fundamental weakness in how it operates going forward.

Mike Galsworthy

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