Who is Viktor Orban, Hungarian Prime Minister struggling to stay in power after 16 years?

4 hours ago

Paul Kirby,Digital publisher EuropeAnd

Nick Thorpe,Correspondent in Budapest

No European Union leader has led his country as long as Viktor Orbán. But after 16 years, he will face his biggest challenge in the April 12 election, where most opinion polls suggest he is headed for defeat by former party member Péter Magyar.

Since 2010, Orbán has transformed Hungary into what the European Parliament has denounced as a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy.” He doesn’t seem to know how to describe his own invention. He tried both “illiberal democracy” and “Christian liberty”. His allies in the American Maga movement call this “national conservatism”.

Orbán has repeatedly clashed with his European Union colleagues over the war in Ukraine, blocking vital funding for kyiv, which he accuses of trying to force Hungary into war with Russia.

And yet, it has powerful international allies.

He is seen as Vladimir Putin’s strongest partner in the EU and was supported by US President Donald Trump in his bid for a fifth consecutive term. While Trump promised to drive America’s “economic might” into Hungary if he wins again, Vice President JD Vance visited Budapest five days before the election, intervening in the campaign to call on voters to “stand with Viktor Orbán, because he’s got your back.”

Within the EU, the Fidesz leader’s closest allies come from the radical and hard right.

His antagonism toward Brussels still bears fruit with many Hungarians, but Orbán appears increasingly alone among European leaders seeking European unity in response to the war in Ukraine.

His Foreign Minister, Péter Szijjártó, recently admitted to personally sharing details of EU meetings with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, but described these conversations as “everyday diplomacy”.

“Orbán and his foreign minister left Europe a long time ago,” observed Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

His personal charisma is an unquestionable ingredient in his success, but polls suggest many of his supporters are fed up with him and the corruption allegations swirling around his party.

Orbán appeared shaken when he was booed during a campaign speech in March in the northwestern town of Győr.

Orbán was very different from the man whose former football coach once highlighted his ability to “think about the ball”.

This is a leader who rolled up his sleeves and piled sandbags alongside firefighters and volunteers when toxic red sludge from a bauxite mine engulfed a Hungarian valley and threatened the banks of the Danube in 2010.

Now 62, Orbán made his mark while still a law student in Budapest in the late 1980s, as the Soviet Union began to collapse, by creating a political movement called Fidesz, or Alliance of Young Democrats.

“If we believe in our own power, we can end the communist dictatorship,” he told a quarter of a million Hungarians in a bold seven-minute speech. They were gathered in the city’s Heroes’ Square for the reburial of the man behind the failed 1956 Hungarian uprising, Imre Nagy.

Reflecting on his words ten years later, he said he had “denounced everyone’s silent desire for free elections and an independent, democratic Hungary.”

The democracy that replaced Soviet authoritarian rule changed dramatically under Orbán, who, according to Hungarian-born journalist Paul Lendvai, went “from one of the most promising defenders of Hungarian democracy to the main author of its demise.”

Professor Andras Bozoki, former Minister of Culture, has described Hungary since 2010 as “the only former consolidated liberal democracy in the EU that has reached the level of a non-democratic system as a hybrid regime.”

Viktor Orbán was born in 1963, an hour west of Budapest, the eldest of three sons whose father was an agricultural engineer and member of the Communist Party and whose mother was a special education teacher.

There was no running water at his family’s home in Felcsut, a village of about 2,000 people where he still has a house.

In a 1989 interview, he recalled being beaten twice a year by his father, Gyozo, whom he described as a violent man: “When he beat me, he also screamed. I remember it all as a bad experience.

Nothing in his childhood suggested that he would continue to challenge the communist regime. He attended high school and was involved in the Communist Youth League.

His main interest was football, playing for his local club, FC Felcsut, and he remains very enthusiastic about his childhood sport. In 2014, he opened a controversial new stadium there called Pancho Arena, where top team Puskás Akadémia plays in front of small crowds.

In the months before he entered college, he did his military service, where he says he refused an approach from communist intelligence to become an informant.

He was 23 when he married fellow student Anikó Lévai, whom he had met at university. They have five children, four daughters and a son, Gáspár, who was trained by the British army at Sandhurst and served as an officer in the Hungarian army in Chad.

After his 1989 speech to a large crowd in Heroes’ Square, he briefly studied liberal political philosophy at Oxford. His scholarship was funded by Hungarian-born billionaire philanthropist George Soros, a benefactor he would turn against years later.

Within months, he had abandoned his studies to campaign in the 1990 elections, when Fidesz won 22 seats, with Viktor Orbán leading the party’s list.

Friends from his student days became key members of Fidesz, and his university director, Istvan Stumpf, later took on the role of chief of staff during Orban’s first term, from 1998 to 2002.

As a young MP, Viktor Orbán and his party joined the international liberal world movement in 1992.

Political scientist Zoltan Lakner believes that he changed his ideology during the second half of the 1990s. With Hungary governed by a liberal-socialist coalition, he realized that “to achieve political success, he had to turn his back on liberalism and transform his party into a nationalist and illiberal political force”.

Perhaps the seeds of his turnaround were already sown at Oxford. During his few months at Pembroke College, he became friends with the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton.

Or maybe it was more political opportunism.

Orbán became leader of Fidesz in 1993 and was already pushing it toward the center-right when the conservative MDF party lost power in 1994. Fidesz filled the void left by the weakened conservatives.

Peter Rona, an Oxford-based economist and former candidate for the presidency of Hungary, describes a meeting in the early 1990s where Orbán said he wanted to create a “modern conservative party.”

When Peter Rona warned him that previous politicians who had attempted the same thing had quickly abandoned “modern” when circumstances demanded it, Orbán replied: “So be it.”

In 1998, Orbán led Fidesz to electoral victory and became, at age 35, Europe’s youngest prime minister, bringing Hungary into NATO in 1999.

He then suffered two electoral defeats, in 2002 and 2006, and each time the Fidesz leader learned his lessons.

The 2002 defeat changed him. “The nation cannot be defeated,” he told his supporters, while trying to digest what had just happened.

After 2002, Orbán befriended Árpád Habony, a martial arts instructor and businessman, who became his personal guru. Habony has become a trusted ally and part of the business empire that underpins Fidesz.

Orbán was returned to power amid the turbulence of the global economic crisis in 2010 and has not lost since.

Since then, he has transformed Hungary by making numerous changes to its laws and constitution, winning four consecutive elections with four consecutive “super-majorities”, controlling two-thirds of Parliament.

In an attempt to secure his legacy, more than 40 “cardinal laws” were passed, reshaping state institutions, the economy, electoral laws and the media.

The economy was stabilized, public finances were secured and European funds arrived.

However, expensive public projects have been entrusted to Orbán’s immediate entourage, including a childhood friend and a son-in-law.

Fidesz and its supporters have gradually taken control of the Hungarian media landscape, replacing foreign investors, according to Hungarian media monitor Mertek.

In 2018, almost all “pro-Orban media outlets” transferred their ownership rights to a foundation called Kesma, whose board of directors consisted of Fidesz MPs and the head of a pro-Fidesz think tank, according to Mertek.

For several years, Hungary has been considered the most corrupt country in the EU by Transparency International.

The European Parliament, both in 2018 and 2025, has warned of persistent threats co between the rule of law. Billions of euros in EU funds intended for Hungary have since been frozen.

The EU is one of several targets Orbán has set his sights on in recent years.

His latest confrontation with European leaders means that 90 billion euros of funds intended for Ukraine have been suspended due to the Hungarian veto.

Sandor Csintalan, both a former ally and critic of Orbán, spoke of “a constant need to radicalize,” which sets him apart from other European conservatives.

Ukraine has become another central issue for the longtime Hungarian leader, as he focused for years on George Soros and migrants.

In 2013, political consultants George Birnbaum and Arthur Finkelstein gave him the idea of ​​making an enemy of Soros.

“Soros was a good target,” Birnbaum explained, “because enough people in Hungary didn’t like the idea of ​​this billionaire…like the Wizard of Oz, controlling politics, behind the curtain.”

Orbán accused George Soros’ civil society groups of “trying secretly and with foreign money to influence Hungarian politics.” Poster campaign condemned by critics as anti-Semitic targeted the philanthropist, although Orbán was able to emphasize his support for Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in rejecting the accusations.

The Soros-founded Central European University, established in 1991 as Hungary gained democracy, was forced to move most of its activities to Vienna in 2019.

In July 2015, as refugees and irregular migrants entered the EU through Hungarian borders in increasing numbers, Orbán drew a “key link between illegal immigration arriving in Europe and the spread of terrorism.”

The solution was clear, he said: “We would like to keep Europe for the Europeans…we also want…to preserve Hungary for the Hungarians.”

A fence was built on the Serbian border and new laws were introduced, criminalizing migrants. A 2018 “Stop Soros” law criminalized those who helped irregular migrants, and the EU’s highest court ruled that Budapest had failed to fulfill its obligations under European law.

In the run-up to the April 12 vote, Ukraine has become the main focus of Orbán’s campaign, who accuses Volodymyr Zelensky of blocking Hungary’s oil supplies and his opponents of wanting to give Hungarian money to kyiv.

Although he has been able to count on the political support of Trump and Putin, his claim to protect Hungary from the leaders who are waging war has become increasingly fragile.

He has not experienced an electoral defeat since 2006. Despite the support of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, he now finds himself facing the greatest test of his political career.