Republikon Institute

It is safe to conclude that Fidesz’s dominance was not sustained through policy persuasion alone, but through a political environment in which potential alternatives were systematically delegitimized before they could gain sufficient traction.

Ever since the 2000s, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party had focused on the media; they considered control over the press as a major ingredient to success. Unlike the previous Socialist government who had had capital salvaged from the times of Hungary’s transition to democracy, Fidesz did not have their own press outlets.

Over the past 100 years, the region of Central-Eastern Europe (CEE) has always faced distinct kinds of uncertainty; political instability, armed conflicts, geopolitical problems and corruption. The constant fluctuation of the value of money, the frequent changes in constitutional law, economic instability, and inflation have also been leading factors in this continuous uncertainty.

The day after election night, Hungary woke up to outstretched arms, ready to embrace its return to Europe. April 12, 2026, stands as a pivotal moment in the history of Hungarian democracy. The victory of Péter Magyar and the Tisza Party marked the end of Viktor Orbán and Fidesz’s 16-year reign, ushering in a new chapter in the country’s modern timeline.

To understand why European identity runs deeper in the post-communist East, one must understand what “Europe” meant to societies that lived under the Iron Curtain. It was not merely a geographic area, but rather the name of liberation.

How has the relationship between the two countries evolved since Donald Tusk\'s recent election? To answer the question, it is essential to explore the origins of the Polish-Hungarian relationship.

Following Google (Alphabet), the tech giant Meta has also decided to simply ban political, electoral, and social issue advertisements in the EU due to the \"unenforceability\" and excessive complexity of the new EU transparency rules (TTPA). Consequently, as of October 6, it is no longer possible to run such advertisements on Facebook.

The two front-runner parties, the long-time governing Fidesz-KDNP, and the newcomer Tisza Party, will surely have a great presence in Parliament, but aside from the far-right Our Homeland party, other opposition groups have either withdrawn or hope to pass the 5% entry threshold.

In 2016, Viktor Orbán made a risky move. The prime minister’s July endorsement of Donald Trump might have come as a surprise given the obvious ideological affinity between the two leaders, but Orbán was the first head of state to openly back the American president when Hillary Clinton was still considered as the favorite for the White House.

Budapest remains one of the most transit-oriented large cities in Europe, meaning that much of its urban structure and mobility patterns are organized around public transport, with dense development and daily activities concentrated along major transit corridors.