Whither Hungary?

On April 12, Péter Magyar’s Tisza party won a projected two-thirds supermajority in Hungary’s parliamentary elections, ending Viktor Orbán’s sixteen-year tenure as prime minister. This “regime change” of sorts heralds a Western pivot in Budapest’s foreign policy, with the incoming government indicating a willingness to cooperate with the EU on anti-corruption reforms and aid for Ukraine while still maintaining pragmatic policies on immigration and Russian energy dependency. Is this the definitive end of Orbán’s “national conservative” model or simply a reformation of Hungarian conservative politics? How will Magyar successfully unlock the billions of euros in withheld EU funding? And what becomes of Viktor Orbán himself—will he transition into a behind-the-scenes kingmaker of the opposition, or has he entered a political wilderness?

On Wednesday, April 15, the Center for the National Interested welcomed two experts to discuss what the election signals for the future of Hungarian politics and foreign policy.

—István Kiss is the executive director at the Danube Institute. From 2013 to 2018 he worked at the Századvég Foundation first as a Research Fellow then as a Senior Research Fellow. Formerly, he worked as a Political Adviser in the Prime Minister’s Office of Hungary.

—Dr. Kristóf György Veres is the international director at the Danube Institute and a non-resident fellow at the Center for the National Interest. Earlier, he was a researcher at the Budapest-based Migration Research Institute. His writing has appeared in The National Interest, Newsweek, The Washington Examiner, Think Global Health, The Jewish News Syndicate, and Providence Magazine.

Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest, moderated the discussion.