DEMOCRACY WATCHHungarian Election Exposes Tensions at the Heart of Donald Trump’s Plans to Boost the Far‑Right in Europe

By Stefan Wolff

The world will be watching on April 12 when Hungarians head to the polls in parliamentary elections that will determine the country’s next prime minister. This may sound exaggerated, but these parliamentary elections are about much more than simply whether the incumbent prime minister, Viktor Orbán, will serve another term as Hungary’s leader.

His main challenger, Péter Magyar, was until two years ago a close ally of the Hungarian prime minister. On some key issues – future oil purchases from Russia, resisting fast-track EU accession for Ukraine – Magyar is a continuity candidate who, at best, signals moderation, rather than radical change.

If he fails to win a two-thirds majority, which would allow him to change the constitution and undo many of the deeply undemocratic changes Orbán has made to Hungary’s political system, Magyar’s hands will also be tied domestically and he may not even be able to deliver on his key campaign promise – to clean up the systemic corruption that has thrived under Orbán.

But – while important in itself – the outcome of the elections is almost secondary in a bigger picture of an election campaign that has revealed much about the broader, and increasingly fraught, geopolitical dynamics of European politics.

Orbán has been leaning into his close relationship with the US president, Donald Trump. At one level, this is not surprising. Trump has publicly endorsed him twice this year alone – first in February and then again in March. The US president also dispatched both his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and vice president, J.D. Vance, to Hungary to add weight to his candidacy.

Vance, visiting Hungary just days before the elections, praised Orbán’s governance and leadership style as a model for Europe and attacked the EU for trying to influence the outcome of the vote.

Such blatant election interference by the US in a Nato and EU member state is as unprecedented as it is worrying. It signals a new level of determination by the White House to shape alliances with other far-right populists predicated on the vague notion of “moral cooperation … and the defense of western civilization”, as Vance put it during his visit to Budapest on April 7.

But while Orbán reveled in Washington’s endorsements, his unconditional embrace of Trump is no longer the dominant approach to Washington among many of Europe’s rightwing populist parties. The appeal of the Maga movement is rapidly diminishing in Europe.