Hungary: a threat the EU must confront
Across central and eastern Europe, systemic problems pose grave threats to the European Union and the western liberal order
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán celebrates on a podium on the bank of the Danube River after winning the parliamentary election with members of his Fidesz party on Sunday. Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images
Viktor Orban’s landslide election win, a victory built on xenophobia, intolerance and preposterous conspiracy theories, underlines the alarming authoritarian drift in Hungary and the challenge the European Union faces in confronting it.
Orban, an illiberal demagogue, will return for a third consecutive term as prime minister with his power enhanced. Having won 49 per cent of the vote, his Fidesz party will have 133 of the 199 seats in parliament – a supermajority that will allow the government to change Hungary’s constitution. Orban says his priority is preventing refugees and other migrants being resettled in Hungary under a plan he claims was devised by the liberal philanthropist George Soros. Fidesz officials say their deputies will soon push ahead with a controversial “Stop Soros” Bill that could result in non-governmental groups that “support migration” being banned on national security grounds.