Where now for the new Hungarian government as they unpick Orban legacy
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Who is Peter Madjar and what led to his rise as Hungary's Prime Minister?
The new Prime Minister, Peter Madjar, continues to call for the removal of President Tomáš Šuják. Following his landslide win in April, Madjar vowed to remove several senior government figures who supported his predecessor, Viktor Orbán, including the Hungarian president. All of this happening as the Taoiseach is due to travel to Budapest tomorrow for his first official meeting with the new Prime Minister. But what do we know about Peter Magyar and his journey to the role of Hungary's new prime minister? To tell us all about his road to power and joined by lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations at UCD, Graeme Finlay. Morning, Graeme. Morning. Thanks very much for joining us.
It's just under two months since Magyar defeated Viktor Orbán. It's a huge change in what the people of Hungary have experienced after 16 years.
Yeah, and of a particularly populist, illiberal, by his own lights, democracy or competitive authoritarianism, if you follow it closely, where Orbán dominated the society, gave jobs and funneled cash to his friends. Yeah. gerrymandered the map for elections, controlled both state and private media, you know, really set up an authoritarian system in the heart of Europe. And so what Magyar is doing amounts to practically transitional justice. He's moved very, very quickly to try and dismantle the Orban machine, to get rid of people like Tomáš Šuljuk, as you said, the president who was installed by Orban, and just purge them from ministries, from state companies, from especially the national broadcaster, which he described as a factory of lies when he had a very confrontational appearance on it, saying he had not been on it since 2024.
His rise was incredibly quick, and he's moving very quickly now. And he has a constitutional, he has a supermajority in the parliament, which means he can change the constitution, which is how Orban set up his system, often ruling by decree, and it's how Magyar is tearing it down.
Now, Magyar is not a very well-known figure or wasn't a very well-known figure in this part of the world, but he has had a long career in Hungarian politics, quite a colourful career.
Very colourful. I mean, it's very, very lurid. And it's been very, very recent. He was a senior figure in Fidesz Orbán's party until 2023. He was married to Judith Varga, who was the former Minister of Justice. And Everything starts to unravel for Orban and for Judith Varga, and the rise of Madyar happens with a terrible scandal over cover-ups of sexual abuse in an orphanage. And this really riled Hungary. It led to the resignation of the previous president and the installation of Tomáš Šuljók. And Judith Varga's resignation. And after she resigned, Magyar resigned all his positions in state companies. They'd since been divorced. And he released a tape which showed her admitting that the regime had...
sort of falsified documents and concealed evidence in a corruption scandal. And then it was off. He became sort of the enemy of Orban. Orban accused him of domestic violence, which he denies, of being an absentee father, which he denies. And even in the last few moments of the election, sort of threatened to release some kind of compromise style sex tape. which didn't appear. So it's been a really rapid rise for Magyar. And he's now the darling of Europe. He's traveling around Europe, meeting with especially allies in the European People's Party, like Friedrich Merz in Germany, Donald Tusk in Poland, but also with Macron and giving a shout out to Michal Martin on his very, very active English language social media.
But, I mean, he was, as you say, he was a leading figure in Fidej, so he presumably is on the right of the political spectrum. And so you've replaced one conservative nationalist party with a slightly less conservative, slightly less conservative?
Almost equally conservative. I mean, he really shares Orban's values in many, many ways.
What changes is Madjar implementing to dismantle Viktor Orbán's legacy?
He's socially conservative. He's very, very skeptical about migration. He campaigned on not signing the Migration Pact, which is going into force on June 12th, which everybody should be looking out for.
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