On the night of 12 April, Hungary’s long-serving far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán, phoned his challenger, Péter Magyar, for around a minute to congratulate him on the centre-right Tisza Party’s election victory and concede defeat.
The moment also signalled a swift end to the political, legal and economic system Orbán had spent 16 years building to keep his Fidesz party in office.
Magyar’s landslide win secured a two-thirds parliamentary majority — the threshold required under Hungarian law to amend the constitution and pass so-called “cardinal laws” governing key state institutions.
As with Orbán before him, this supermajority effectively handed Magyar the power to rewrite the constitution and overhaul substantial legislation largely unopposed.
Magyar, who had campaigned not merely for a change of government but a change of system, lost no time in calling for the resignation of the country’s president, Tamás Sulyok, as well as other senior officials.
“Let them leave, leave. Don’t wait until we send them away,” Magyar said on election night.
After taking office in May, the main pillars of Orbán’s regime fell within just a few months: the president and the chief prosecutor left, and Orbán’s once-formidable media machine was paralysed. Here’s what happened.
Orbán’s System of National Cooperation
Orbán secured a supermajority in the 2010 parliamentary elections and established the System of National Cooperation, known in Hungary by its acronym NER, presented as a new social contract with the electorate.
Critics, however, viewed NER as a centralised political and economic apparatus built to advance Orbán’s own vision of “illiberalism” — his term for an alternative to classical European liberal democracy.
“Imagine it as a board game in which one player can rewrite the rules at any moment to suit his own interests — moving forward five squares if necessary, sending an opponent back to the start, or removing them from the board altogether,” political analyst Szabolcs Dull told Euronews.
Orbán relied on his parliamentary majority to pass legislation rapidly. But from 2020, he governed largely by decree, first under a coronavirus-related state of emergency, then — after 2022 — citing the war in Ukraine.
Democratic checks and balances were weakened through loyalist appointments to key institutions, while the public broadcaster MTVA and roughly 500 outlets under the KESMA media holding helped propagate the government’s narrative.
Dull said the promise to dismantle NER and remove its figures had proven to be Magyar’s most popular pledge. “This is what brought him the greatest popularity. This is what voters now expect of him.”
President and chief prosecutor forced out
Perhaps Magyar’s most significant political victory was the removal of President Tamás Sulyok. The former president left office in mid-July after a constitutional amendment — which he himself signed — declared his mandate terminated.
The same amendment capped MPs’ mandates at 12 years and introduced a retirement age of 70 for constitutional judges, removing Constitutional Court head Péter Polt, a longstanding Orbán ally.
“They terminated the mandate of the sitting president without any legal argument — simply because they politically disagree with him. I find that unacceptable,” Balázs Orbán, Viktor Orbán’s former political adviser, told Euronews.
Magyar had repeatedly argued that Sulyok was unfit for office, representing party interests rather than the nation.
Dull said the move carried both symbolic and practical significance for Magyar: “The Hungarian president has the right to pardon convicted people. Magyar has promised to hold those linked to the old system accountable — he cannot risk the president pardoning them.”
Magyar’s government also dismissed four secret service chiefs, the head of the counterterrorism police (TEK) János Hajdu, Orbán’s former spokesperson Bertalan Havasi, and the head of the Government Audit Office.
Hungary’s Sovereignty Protection Office — which targeted foreign-funded media and NGOs, and drew heavy criticism from the European Commission — was shut down.
In June, Chief Prosecutor Gábor Bálint Nagy resigned under political pressure, in a further gain for Magyar.
“The prosecution service must not become an instrument in political struggles, nor a stage for day-to-day power games,” Nagy said in a statement.
Dull described Nagy’s departure as another milestone: “In certain cases, investigations were either never opened or were suspended — cases that were plainly inconvenient for the Orbán government.”
Accountability and corruption
At the end of July, the Hungarian parliament established the Asset Recovery and Asset Protection Office to investigate Orbán-era corruption and recover state assets. Hungary has ranked among the EU’s most corrupt member states for years, while businessmen close to Orbán became major beneficiaries of state contracts.
Among them: Lőrinc Mészáros, Orbán’s childhood friend and Hungary’s richest man, with interests in construction, tourism and agriculture; Orbán’s son-in-law, István Tiborcz, who became a billionaire during the Fidesz era; and Orbán’s father, Győző Orbán, a key figure in mining who secured road and rail contracts. All maintain they acted lawfully, though their dealings are expected to face investigation.
“A key campaign promise of the Tisza party was that those responsible for criminal corruption under Fidesz would be held accountable. What we’re seeing is the start of a process likely to continue for the foreseeable future,” analyst Daniel Hegedűs said.
Another case under investigation is the so-called Matolcsy affair. It involved the alleged loss of around 500 billion forints (€1.38 billion) from the Hungarian National Bank, centred on former governor György Matolcsy and his son, Ádám.
Days after the election, Magyar asked the Hungarian tax authority (NAV) to block transfers of Orbán-linked assets to accounts in the UAE, Singapore and the United States; NAV subsequently blocked several such transfers.
Hungary is also due to join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) later this year, giving it power to investigate EU fund fraud from July 2021 retrospectively.
Alongside the asset-recovery effort, prosecutors have opened several criminal investigations involving former senior officials — potentially including Orbán himself.
Former TEK chief János Hajdu was questioned over the case of the Ukrainian money convoy, in which Hungarian commandos raided two cash-carrying vehicles belonging to Ukraine’s Oschadbank in March, at the height of the election campaign.
Seven staff members were detained and later expelled from Hungary; millions of euros in cash and gold bars were confiscated. Hajdu is not a suspect in the unlawful-detention case.
Orbán was present at the TEK headquarters on the day of the raid, according to Hungarian media. “It would not only have been important to detain János Hajdu, but also to investigate and detain three others, including Viktor Orbán,” the lawyer representing the Ukrainian money carriers told Euronews in June.
He added that former chief prosecutor Nagy — who resigned weeks later — may have offered Orbán a “safety net”. Orbán maintains the raid was conducted lawfully.
A separate investigation concerns the alleged misuse of National Cultural Fund money for Fidesz campaigning. Seven suspects have been detained, including the chief of staff of former culture minister Balázs Hankó. Prosecutors have also seized Fidesz’s data servers, effectively disrupting the party’s internal communications.
“This has nothing to do with the corruption case, which we believe is itself fabricated. Even if you wanted to investigate that, it doesn’t follow that you need access to all of the party’s data,” Fidesz’s Balázs Orbán said.
Erosion of Fidesz
Shortly after the election, in late April, Viktor Orbán announced he would not take up his parliamentary mandate, ending 36 consecutive years as a member of the National Assembly.
“We don’t need me in parliament right now, but in the reorganisation of the national side,” he said, adding that he intended to focus on rebuilding Fidesz and had accepted the party leadership for one year.
In June, the Tisza-dominated parliament passed the so-called “lex Orbán”, capping prime ministerial tenure at eight years. As it applies from 1990, it effectively bars Orbán from standing for office again.
The mandate of members of parliament will also be capped at 12 years, applied retrospectively, barring several veteran Fidesz politicians from running in the next election.
“Half of the opposition and its most powerful leaders were excluded from politics through personalised, retroactive laws. This is the end of democracy — because if it is not the people who decide who to vote for, but the government that decides who they may vote for, democracy is over,” Orbán said in response.
The period marked perhaps the deepest crisis in the history of Fidesz, founded before the fall of communism. Parliamentary group leader Gergely Gulyás resigned, citing the new mandate limits.
Former foreign minister Péter Szijjártó left parliament for a management role at Chinese electric-vehicle maker BYD in July, while former transport minister János Lázár and long-time strategist Antal Rogán largely withdrew from public life.
Media landscape transformed
In early July, state broadcaster MTVA aired a black screen bearing an apology:
“Public media cannot lie. We apologise for having done so.”
MTVA has been perceived as biased domestically and internationally. Its CEO, Dániel Papp, was convicted in 2018 of manipulating a news piece. Papp resigned shortly after the election.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has also criticised MTVA several times for systemic bias and an uneven playing field.
After the news broadcaster was shut down, a temporary management team announced that the company would be restructured to become independent and credible, fulfilling one of Magyar’s key campaign pledges. Senior editors were dismissed the same day.
The disruption extended well beyond MTVA. Mediaworks, publisher of several pro-Fidesz newspapers and radio stations under the KESMA holding, laid off hundreds of staff amid financial difficulties.
Mandiner, another pro-government outlet linked to the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), announced cuts of 60 staff members. Megafon, which had financed pro-Orbán influencers, closed entirely.
Dull said these outlets had relied heavily on state advertising:
“Fidesz media survived because state-owned companies advertised there. Once the government changed, that advertising stopped, and many outlets found themselves in commercial difficulty — they had been living off the state to fulfil a political function.”
Culture and education contested
MCC, an educational institute closely tied to Orbán, is facing financial strain and possible closure.
The public-interest trust managing MCC will be dissolved, and its assets nationalised — a serious blow, given that MCC received a 2020 state asset transfer including 10% stakes in energy company MOL and pharmaceutical firm Richter, generating tens of billions of forints in annual dividends.
Fifteen other public-interest trusts performing non-university functions will also be wound down, and Fidesz-nominated officials removed from university boards.
Meanwhile, the culture ministry has begun investigating the use of public funds under the previous government.
Poet János Dénes Orbán (no relation to the former prime minister) received 412 million forints (€1.14 million) from the Carpathian Basin Talent Development Nonprofit — a state body he himself directed. Other individuals received similar payments during the campaign period.
Is Magyar’s approach democratic?
Fidesz has characterised Magyar’s dismantling of Orbán’s system as an attack on democracy, particularly questioning the legality of the president’s removal.
“They terminated the mandate of the president. They banned the former prime minister from returning. They banned roughly half the Fidesz parliamentary group,” said Balázs Orbán. “That’s just the beginning — where does this end?”
Magyar rejects any suggestion of authoritarianism: “The law is not arbitrariness. Freedom is not oppression. The party is not the state. Justice is not dictatorship. Politics is not plunder. The homeland belongs to every Hungarian. Welcome to the new Hungary.”
Analyst Hegedűs argues Hungary had experienced genuine state capture under Orbán, making such measures largely unavoidable:
“In dismantling state capture and restoring institutional independence during a re-democratisation phase, removing political appointees of the previous captured regime may be unavoidable.”
Orbán’s far-right allies, Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini, criticised Magyar over the seizure of Fidesz’s servers, while dozens of right-wing MEPs wrote to the European Commission raising concerns about the state of democracy in Hungary.
“Why is the Commission now silent when a government is openly violating European constitutional principles?” the letter asked. A separate letter from Fidesz MEPs argued that shutting down the state broadcaster’s news service breached EU law.
The European Commission — which has pursued several proceedings against Hungary over rule-of-law backsliding and corruption under Orbán — has broadly welcomed Magyar’s reforms. In its annual July rule-of-law report, it described them as a “radical change”.
Hungary has agreed to a list of rule-of-law and anti-corruption commitments in exchange for €16.4 billion in previously frozen EU funds.
Justice Commissioner Michael McGrath previously told Euronews that the president’s removal was justified:
“It’s inevitable when you have such a seismic change in the political landscape of a country that there will be issues, and there will be changes in personnel.”
Dull added that many Hungarians want institutional guarantees that Magyar will not entrench his own power in the way his predecessor did — though the new prime minister has already accepted some limits.
“If we start talking about a ‘Magyar system’, we already know when it will end. The legislation limiting the prime minister’s mandate to two terms applies to him as well,” Dull said.
The analyst said the true test of Magyar’s ambitions will be the drafting of a new constitution, a process expected to take at least 18 months. “We will see from the details whether he intends to build a new system or not,” Dull said.
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