They failed humanly, politically and morally
Today we already know how Hungarian voters evaluated Orbán’s sixteen-year political stability and governance efficiency. The legend of the successful model of illiberal democracy and sovereign politics, which Fico sold as inspiration at home, has collapsed. European critics of Orbán did not describe it in the most accurate way. Only Péter Magyar’s speeches after the elections definitively exposed what Orbán had built in sixteen years and what Fico admired and wanted for the citizens of Slovakia.
The most significant was the statement by the chairman of the winning Tisza party immediately after the elections that it was not a matter of replacing the Fidesz government, but of “changing the regime that was led by an organized criminal group.” He spoke of people who “plundered, robbed, indebted and destroyed” the country. About politicians who “failed humanly, politically and morally”.
Thus, Magyar is not only claiming that Orbán’s rule has been a failure. He claims that a clientelistic system emerged in Hungary, which took over the state, removed control mechanisms and linked political power, economic interests, the media and the security apparatus in favor of a narrow elite. A regime that appropriated the state, media, public money and the concept of nation.
In this oligarchic model, huge public resources were funneled to a narrow group of politically loyal businessmen and politicians. After the defeat of Fidesz in the elections, they tried to export their assets abroad or demonstratively try to return their companies to the state. At the same time, the shredding of documents became widespread.
Everything will come out
In his post-election speeches, Péter Magyar pointed out that corruption had become the norm, that the ruling elites had lived for years in the belief that “nothing could happen to them”, and that control bodies protected power instead of the public. He announced that among the first drafts of the new parliament will be the law on the National Office for the Restitution and Protection of Property. The office will function independently of the government and will not work on political orders.
He also announced the entry into the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, so that it would be possible to investigate the misuse of European funds outside the control of domestic political networks. He emphasized that political contacts, loyalty or old acquaintances will not protect anyone from being held accountable. He repeated the sentence that “Hungary will no longer be a country without consequences”.
Even as prime minister, Péter Magyar decided to show people the luxury in which his predecessor’s government was operating. He was said to be in shock from the building, to which the officials moved in 2025 after an expensive renovation. “Snobbery and pomp in a plundered country. The world of the Hungarian Ceaușescus,” he wrote. He told the former ministers who had the documents shredded that “everything will come to light.”
Péter Magyar has repeatedly spoken of the “moral decay” of the Orbán regime. He used the harshest formulations in connection with linking political power, propaganda, corruption, clientelism and cynical abuse of patriotism. According to him, Hungarians were forced to live in a system where “lying was state policy”.
Like in North Korea
After years when, according to Reporters Without Borders, pro-government structures controlled about 80 percent of the media space, the new prime minister stated: “Every Hungarian deserves a media that tells the truth.” He called the former public media “factories of lies”. According to him, they were making propaganda reminiscent of “North Korea and the Nazi media.”
In a speech on Kossuth Square, he spoke about the propaganda machine that taught people that “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength” and that anyone who thinks differently is “less Hungarian.” He thus showed that the Orbán system of “illiberal democracy” was not only based on institutional control, but also on the transformation of a political opponent into an internal enemy.
In his inaugural speech, he apologized to journalists, teachers, civil activists and all people bullied and persecuted by the regime. He explicitly acknowledged that Orbán’s system did not consider critical civil society as a legitimate part of democracy, but as an enemy of the state.
This is your mode change
After sixteen years of continuous rule, which Robert Fico spoke of as a prerequisite for economic success, in addition to a constitutional majority for Fidesz, it became clear that Hungary was not approaching the most advanced EU states. The numbers say the exact opposite.
According to Eurostat data for 2024, real individual consumption per capita in Hungary was at 72 percent of the EU average, the lowest in the Union. Eurostat also showed economic lagging. GDP per capita in PPS, i.e. in purchasing power standard, was approximately 24 percent below the EU average in 2025.
Transparency International reports that Hungary was again at the bottom of the EU in 2025 with a score of 40 points and globally in 84th place. This was Hungary’s worst result in the history of the corruption perception index. Orbán’s Hungary also fared very poorly in the area of the rule of law. The World Justice Project ranked it 79th out of 143 countries in the world in 2025 and last, 31st in the EU/EFTA/North America regional group.
Péter Magyar described the country inherited from Orbán as a state where three million people live in poverty, 800,000 pensioners live below the subsistence minimum, 400,000 children in poverty and social exclusion, the health care system is “bleeded out” and 900,000 people do not have a general practitioner.
He included social inequality, the state of healthcare and education, the housing crisis, the child protection crisis and the departure of a large number of young and qualified people abroad among Hungary’s basic problems. According to him, the voters of Fidesz and other parties are also victims of the system with chronic corruption.
For all these reasons, the crowd in Kossuth Square after the inauguration of the new Prime Minister of Hungary responded mainly to the motives of liberation, the return of parliament to the people and the end of humiliation. He clapped after his words: “This is your regime change.” It is no wonder that according to a Median survey from late April and early May, two-thirds of respondents would put ex-prime minister Viktor Orbán on trial, while only 23 percent were against it.
