Lisa O’Carroll

Indeed, as one of our reporters said, it was a bit like watching a World Cup celebration.

I think one of the reasons why it was so extraordinary was the size of the majority that Peter Magyar won.

Going into the election on Friday even, we were thinking here at The Guardian and the polls were showing that there could be a late swing, but that it would be very close.

And the fear was that Orban, he would declare that the election was stolen and that would prompt a wave of, you know, yet more intervention from Vance and Trump.

And that didn't happen.

Well, Orbán has been an absolute thorn in the side of the EU for the last few years.

Even for the year or so that I was there, every single council meeting, I had to deal with the challenge that Orbán would vote against whatever it was in relation to Ukraine.

So it's the disappearance of Orban from those quarterly, sometimes monthly meetings.

I mean, there was one meeting, I remember, where they were discussing a really key thing for Ukraine, which was the enlargement and whether Ukraine could be fast-tracked into the EU.

And Orban came in and said he wasn't going to vote for us.

So again, it was going to be blocked.

But they came up with this wheeze where Olaf Scholz, the then German chancellor, asked Orban to take a break.

So he went out for a loo break.

And in his absence, the 26 voted in favour of an enlargement process, including fast-tracking for Ukraine.

So it allowed them to comply with their unanimity requirement, but also allowed Orban to go back to his own base and say, well, I didn't vote for it.

Yes, he did.

Yes, he did.

Yes, he did.

Right.

It was a bit of choreography.