Budapest erupted in celebration this past weekend as Viktor Orbán's grip on power finally broke. Crowds gathered by the thousands along the Danube, chanting for Europe and democracy while the parliament building glowed behind them. The landslide victory for Péter Magyar's Tisza party didn't just reshape Hungarian politics. It sent shockwaves across the continent and dealt a sharp rebuke to Orbán's two most powerful allies: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.
The energy shift was palpable on the streets. At a pre-election concert on Heroes' Square, young Hungarians channeled the spirit of 1989, when a fiery young student named Orbán had stood in that same spot demanding an end to communism and calling for Soviet troops to leave. Now they were chanting the same refrain, but aimed at the man Orbán had become. "Filthy Fidesz!" and "Russians go home!" filled the square. The irony cut deep. Today's Orbán had become the very thing he once opposed: Putin's chosen instrument in European institutions.
The contrast between the two rallies told the story. Where Tisza drew spontaneous crowds of young people thrumming with purpose, Orbán's final campaign event looked like a carefully choreographed funeral. Professional flags, planted crowd members with megaphones, searchlights stabbing the night sky. Orbán himself was hoarse and irritable, complaining about young people. The exhaustion was unmistakable. After Fidesz flag-wavers were caught admitting on buses that they'd been paid to attend, few doubted the playing field had been tilted ruthlessly in the regime's favor.
Yet gerrymandering, media control, and voter manipulation could not overcome what happened on Sunday. Record turnout surged past all expectations. When the constituency results started coming in, it became clear this was a landslide. At 9pm, Orbán called Magyar to concede. Within minutes, the riverside filled with celebration. "Voldemort is gone!" people shouted. Magyar took the stage to promise a Hungary where people could live freely, where constitutional checks would be restored, where relations with neighbors would be mended, and where the country would stand firmly with NATO and the European Union.
The real test begins now. Magyar's landslide delivered a two-thirds supermajority, the parliamentary supermajority needed to rewrite the constitution. That's the advantage Poland lacked during its own populist reckoning. But obstacles remain. The presidency and constitutional court could still block reform. The cohesion of Fidesz matters too. Orbán may yet fight hard to protect his erected structures.
The economic picture is darker. The Hungarian economy is in rough shape. Fidesz burned through three-quarters of this year's budget trying to buy voters in the final stretch. Nobody knows what binding agreements exist with Russia and China on energy, investment, and loans. Magyar's campaign promises to maintain welfare payments and price controls won't ease the burden. What Hungary desperately needs is rapid access to roughly 17 billion euros in frozen EU funds, plus new disbursements to follow.
This is where Europe must step up. The EU itself bears responsibility for Orbán's rise. Brussels allowed billions in European funds to be funneled directly into the regime's corruption machine for years. Manfred Weber, the same European politician who just congratulated Magyar, spent years protecting Fidesz inside the European People's party. National leaders like Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Juncker coddled Orbán in the gentlemen's club of the European Council, with Juncker famously greeting him by saying "Hello, dictator!" as if it were all a joke.
European leaders must now make a serious commitment. Not by imposing bureaucratic Brussels checkbox conditions that Orbán exploited so skillfully, but by engaging directly with Magyar's government on substantive matters: media freedom, judicial independence, checks on executive power, and accountability for stolen assets. Friedrich Merz and Donald Tusk should join EU leadership in having that top-level conversation.
What makes this moment historic is the precedent. Hungary was first to break free from communism in 1989. It became the first European democracy to corrode from within under populism in 2010. If it now becomes the first to successfully emerge on the other side, that changes the calculus everywhere. It proves there is a path back. Even Washington might eventually want to study what Hungary figured out.
Author James Rodriguez: "Europe got the Orbán problem partly wrong, and now it has a chance to get the solution right, but only if it stops treating democracy restoration like a box-ticking exercise and starts treating it like the moral and strategic imperative it actually is."
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