The Causes & Consequences Of Orban’s Downfall

Most Hungarians came to take his achievements for granted and won’t appreciate what they had until it’s gone.

The EU- and Ukrainian- backed Hungarian opposition just won a two-thirds supermajority in the latest parliamentary elections that ended Viktor Orban’s 16 years in office. His crushing defeat followed the EU earlier freezing €17 billion in allocated funds on rule of law pretexts, Russiagate conspiracy theories derived from wiretaps of Orban and his Foreign Minister, and Ukrainian energy blackmail as well as threats. Liberal-globalists like Ursula von der Leyen, Alex Soros, and Donald Tusk predictably celebrated.

While the aforementioned factors played a role in turning public opinion against Orban, several other ones were arguably more important. For instance, he’s an older politician who naturally doesn’t appeal as much to the youth as his relatively younger rival, Peter Magyar. He’s also been in office for 16 years, so the opposition played on anti-incumbent sentiment, to which end they blamed him for the stagnant economy despite him doing his best given the circumstances. Corruption accusations also abounded.

The socio-political system that Orban built will now be dismantled since the opposition’s two-thirds supermajority enables them to change the constitution. Witch hunts against conservative-nationalists, beginning with him and his Foreign Minister on Russiagate-related grounds, also can’t be ruled out. His policies in support of traditional values might soon become a thing of the past. Although Magyar claims to be an immigration hardliner, he might reverse course to please the EU, thus flooding Hungary.

On the economic front, decoupling from Russian energy could lead to price spikes, though he might move gradually to avoid squandering the goodwill that he has among the electorate. The same goes for his plans to replace the forint, Hungary’s national currency, with the euro. Therefore, while meaningful change is afoot, it might not happen right away. Nevertheless, the end result will be the weakening of Hungarian sovereignty and possibly its outright loss, thus reversing Orban’s hard-earned achievements.

Likewise, Hungary isn’t expected to retain its reputation as Europe’s conservative-nationalist bastion, with this instead shifting to Poland, which was in a friendly competition with Hungary for this title till its own (admittedly very imperfect) conservative-nationalists were “democratically deposed” in fall 2023. Last year, however, Poland narrowly elected a conservative-nationalist president and the former ruling party with which he’s allied might return to power after fall 2027’s next parliamentary elections.

Polish conservatism differs from its more well-known Hungarian and German variants in being explicitly anti-Russian. It also envisages Europe in junior partnership with the US instead of truly sovereign and opposing the US when their interests diverge. From the Polish perspective, this is a necessary cost for ensuring continued US support against Russia and “pragmatically” recognizes the limitations to European leadership, but it’s of course controversial and unpopular outside of Poland and the Baltic States.

All in all, the EU, Ukraine, and liberal-globalists across the West will be emboldened by the dramatic way in which the “Battle for Hungary” ended, which will facilitate the EU’s transition to de facto war footing. Orban stood in the way of this but now he’s been “democratically deposed”. Others such as like-minded Czechia and Slovakia might try to replace Hungary’s role, but they’re considered more vulnerable to EU pressure, including Color Revolutions. The EU’s march to war with Russia might therefore be inevitable.