As he celebrated winning his fourth consecutive term as Hungary’s prime minister on Sunday night, Viktor Orban crowed over those he had defeated.
“We never had so many opponents,” he told supporters of his right-wing Fidesz party in central Budapest. “Brussels bureaucrats … the international mainstream media, and the Ukrainian president.”
That Orban singled out Volodymyr Zelensky speaks to how much the conflict on Europe’s eastern border has already reshaped the continent’s geopolitical dynamics.
Orban’s close ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin and demi-authoritarian ruling style have long made him a thorn in the bloc’s flank. But the war has left him a near pariah, while Zelensky garners war hero status.
The 58-year-old strongman is unafraid to ruffle tensions with Europe’s ruling powers. “We won so big you can see it from the moon, but certainly from Brussels as well,” he said.
Europe’s biggest powers may have hoped the election would mean the end for Orban. Hungary’s opposition parties, after being repeatedly routed since 2010, formed an electoral alliance called United for Hungary with the conservative mayor of Hódmezővásárhely, Peter Marki-Zay, at its helm.
Despite some polling leads, they fell short. It was a good opportunity in some ways, not least because of Hungary’s disastrous handling of Covid: it has the fourth-highest number of deaths per capita of any country after losing more than 45,000 people to the pandemic. Fidesz has launched a tough austerity programme as a consequence.
But the odds were stacked against the challengers. Over the past 12 years, Orban has placed his thumb on the scale to bring about the system he calls “illiberal democracy”: stuffing courts with sympathetic appointees, changing the constitution, gerrymandering electoral districts and eroding the free press.
According to Hungary Today, joint opposition leader Marki-Zay received just five minutes to speak on state-owned TV channel M1 during the entire campaign.
“These are not democratic elections, but they are competitive,” says Daniel Hegedus, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin.
Now, the EU faces years more with a member that is, if not actively hostile, determined to foil its plans, and more confident than ever.
“This election victory will be interpreted in Fidesz as very broad social support for the party’s policies,” Hegedus adds, pointing to crackdowns on LGBT+ people and minorities. “Orban will be especially self-confident to ask the price of his cooperation at the EU level, for example for not blocking sanction decisions in the Council.”
Despite his strong hand in talks, Orban faces a difficult balancing act to maintain relations with Moscow while not leaving Hungary cut off from the lucrative benefits of EU membership.
Economically, Hungary has close ties to Russia in key markets. Last year it imported 92,000 barrels of oil a day from Russia, accounting for 43pc of its imports, according to the International Energy Agency.
Orban has pushed back against demands to cut the supply, insisting “there won’t be sanctions that would apply to gas or oil, so Hungary’s energy supply is secure in the upcoming period”.
But it also has small but important roles in Europe’s oil supply and manufacturing industries. Erik Nielsen, global chief economist at UniCredit, says this may be why former German chancellor Angela Merkel was so willing to tolerate Hungary’s behaviour: “I am more than suspicious that a number of the major German corporates had lobbied her pretty heavily.”
The closeness between Orban and Putin, combined with Hungary’s authoritarian stance on issues including media freedom and law and order, mean the nation is increasingly shunned by its EU partners.
