“Orbán, but her name is just a coincidence,” joked Péter Magyar, Hungary’s main opposition leader, as he introduced Anita Orbán, his foreign policy chief, to Poland’s prime minister. “My name is Donald; I understand,” came the quick-witted response from Tusk at the Munich Security Conference in early February.
If they are the future, as Magyar and Tusk like to believe, then Hungary’s long-reigning prime minister, Viktor Orbán, will become the past. It’s not a role he has any intention of filling. While Magyar was meeting high-level leaders at Europe’s most prominent forum, Orbán was at home awaiting a visit from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Foreign policy has become a field in which both leaders — Orbán, who has been in power for 16 years, and Magyar, who has a real chance to topple him in the April 12 elections — are keen to showcase their international allies. Even though the vote’s main battleground is likely to be domestic issues, the differences on foreign affairs in many ways define the two men.
Magyar aims to end Hungary’s “swing diplomacy”, wants to restore the country’s credibility in Euro-Atlantic institutions, and rebuild cooperation, particularly with Poland. These pro-Western and regional priorities echo those Orbán himself once championed.
Magyar promises to be pragmatic and cooperative, while also promising to strongly defend the national interest. These days, Orbán mingles with President Trump, and with Vladimir Putin, and lashes out against Europeans, including Tusk, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky,y and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
That’s not to say Magyar’s relationship with the EU would be plain sailing. While he would be likely to shun Orbán-style vetoes and blackmail (as with Hungary’s threatened veto on the EU’s €90bn loan to Ukraine), there would probably be clashes on key topics currently in the EU’s agenda — Ukraine, migration, agriculture, and the EU’s seven-year-long budget. On these issues at least, Magyar largely aligns with Orbán.
A recent study by the European Policy Centre shows a close alignment on these key issues in the European Parliament between their parties. It concludes: “Orbán’s defeat would be symbolically significant, but it would not automatically resolve Hungary’s tensions with Brussels.”
The difference lies in tone and method. Rather than being loud and obstructive, Magyar promises a constructive attitude while representing and, if necessary, defending Hungarian interests. Internal considerations, however, do matter: if Magyar’s EU-level actions are perceived as “too liberal” or “left-leaning”, he may lose support from the disillusioned Orbán supporters he seeks to win over.
Magyar’s most ambitious pledge is also his greatest challenge: bringing approximately €18bn ($21bn) of frozen EU funds to Hungary, mirroring Poland’s success in unlocking money from Brussels. This requires compliance with the European Commission’s rule-of-law conditions, covering the judiciary, procurement, anti-corruption measures, and more. Of the 27 conditions in total, 23 remain unmet.
In 2024, Hungary permanently lost €1bn and now risks losing a whopping €10bn from the COVID-era recovery and cohesion funds. In addition, due to non-compliance with EU migration legislation, Hungary is being fined €1m million per day, which is currently deducted from these funds. The €16bn for defense capabilities, known as SAFE funds, is also in question. All this does real damage to the economy — EU funds have contributed more than half the country’s GDP growth since joining the bloc in 2004.
The deadline for compliance is August. Although Magyar has pledged to meet the conditions, the legislative process needed to make good on the promise may be slow, and obstruction by Orbán-appointed officials in key institutions remains a risk. His popularity would be seriously undermined if EU funds remained in the European Commission’s bank account.
Meanwhile, after burning all bridges with the EU and without prospects of bringing home the frozen funds before the election, Orbán had hoped that his ties to US President Donald Trump would earn him a few extra points and financial assistance.
Last November, Orbán, his entire cabinet, and a plane full of pro-government influencers traveled to Washington. Orbán secured a temporary exemption from sanctions on Russian oil and gas imports and seemingly won promised access to an Argentina-style financial shield, although the existence of such an instrument was later debunked by Trump himself. The US leader’s only promise was that strong bilateral relations would prevail as long as both leaders remained in power.
This was also the main message from Rubio’s visit to Budapest on February 17. The Secretary of State stressed that leader-to-leader relations had paved the way for a “new golden age” in US–Hungarian relations, and it is notable that Trump has given social media support to Orbán’s reelection bid.
The Hungarian prime minister had hoped Trump would bolster his campaign with a visit to Budapest. He has repeatedly offered to host talks between Trump, Putin, and Zelenskyy, and is also a founding member of Trump’s Board of Peace. But the visit has not transpired.
Orbán’s greatest hope may be something quite different, and may not bear fruit before the parliamentary elections. If the vote is close and there are allegations of malpractice by either side, he might expect that Trump will respond with offers of support. And might hope that would extend to shelter him from possible legal action by a future Hungarian administration.
Whether this support materializes is another matter, but it’s high on everyone’s mind.
Ferenc Németh is a Ph.D. candidate at Corvinus University of Budapest and a Fulbright visiting researcher at Georgetown University. He has previously conducted research in Toronto and Skopje, worked as a research fellow at the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, and interned at EULEX Kosovo. His areas of expertise include Central and Southeast Europe, EU enlargement, and regional security. Ferenc was a Denton Fellow at CEPA in 2024.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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