Newly elected Hungarian President, P茅ter Magyar. Credit: Mr Silesian, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
The mood was jubilant among liberals and pro-Europeans in Hungary and beyond on April 13 as P茅ter Magyar led the Tisza party to a landslide election victory. His win ended the 16-year administration of Viktor Orb谩n鈥檚 pro-Russian Fidesz party. Given the high turnout and margin of victory, giving Tisza a two-thirds constitutional majority in parliament, the jubilant mood seems justified.
However, defeating Orbán will be a long-term project. While several centrist politicians around the world have successfully unseated governing far-right populists in recent years, fewer have been successful in keeping them at bay long term. Poland’s Donald Tusk and Joe Biden in the US are probably the most obvious examples of this struggle.
A major challenge for Magyar will be to Orbán has put in place over the past 16 years to exercise control over the country. A key component of that system is Fidesz’s extensive control over the media.
I have carried out alongside colleagues shows that, despite a , most Hungarian media outlets are now controlled by people close to Fidesz. The pro-Fidesz Central European Press and Media Foundation () plays a particularly central role, controlling more than 500 national and local media outlets.
Here, the experience of Poland is informative. When Tusk’s centre-right Civic Coalition replaced the populist, right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party as Poland’s governing coalition in December 2023, one of the first actions of the new government was to try and depoliticise public media.
In eight years of PiS government, Polish state media was the party’s policies and launched personal attacks on opposition figures, including Tusk. During a campaign rally months ahead of the election, Tusk said: “We will need exactly 24 hours to turn the PiS TV back into public TV. Take my word for it.”
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For the full article by Professor Gerhard Schnyder visit .
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