Mark Bollobas was born in England but returned to Hungary to try to reconnect with his family roots. For years, as a journalist, he has been covering politics in that central European country, where the Fidesz Party, led by Viktor Orbán, had dominated the political landscape for almost the last two decades.

Since April 2026, that landscape has changed, with a victory for a new political force under Péter Magyar. I sat down and talked with Bollobas about the new Hungarian reality and its repercussions. Here is our conversation.

Who is Péter Magyar? I know he came from Fidesz, but is he an Orban-like figure? 

Magyar started out from the very earliest of days in the heart of the Fidesz power structure. He studied law in the same class as several current Fidesz big-wigs, including Gergely Gulyás, who headed the prime minister’s office in the last Fidesz government. He also led the Fidesz faction in the new Parliament until recently (when he resigned after Tisza changed the Constitution retroactively, so that anyone who held a seat as a member of Parliament for 12 years would no longer be able to run, making him ineligible for the next elections). Gulyás is also the godfather to Magyar’s children.

Magyar was a very successful B-player in Fidesz, holding numerous government positions, including running the student loans department. He was high enough, however, that he was in the enviable position of holding multiple jobs at once, something which only happens when you get influence and are closer to power.

He enjoyed his time there, by all accounts. And he was paid handsomely, at one point earning more than seven million HUF per month for his multiple jobs and positions. This even included a job with HiVentures, a Hungarian government organization to help start-up businesses. 

However, his wife was more successful than him. Her name is Judit Varga, and she was a Fidesz high-flyer as the minister of Justice. I think now it is clear that he felt unappreciated by Fidesz. When she was shuttled off to the European Parliament, he accompanied her, and I think this is where his political ambitions crystallized. He saw firsthand what a cushy and easy gig the European Parliament is. Perhaps this is where the lightbulb went on in his head; perhaps this is where he made his first connections with the Brussels bureaucracy. But I don’t know, this is pure conjecture on my part. 

He is not an Orbán-like figure. Orbán came from true struggle, from getting hounded by the police, from getting arrested, from holding political rallies when that came with a true price of harassment, incarceration, and police pressure. Orbán rose without help from the West. In this, Magyar and Orbán couldn’t be more distinct. Magyar comes from an established political system that worked in his favor — not against him. A system which he was involved in. A system from which he profited.

Before the 2022 election, which Fidesz won in a landslide, Magyar’s marriage to Varga was falling apart. I do know that a key member of the Fidesz cabinet, Antal Rogán, reached out to him and implored him not to split from his wife. Judging by how much Magyar hates Rogán now, a man who spent the last four years as the head of Hungarian intelligence, it’s clear that Magyar expected something on the backend as a mark of the government’s gratitude. When that thank you didn’t arrive, it was the final straw, in my opinion. When Hungary was rocked by a pedophile-accomplice-getting-pardoned scandal, a scandal which saw his wife being forced to resign, it was the match that lit the touchpaper of his political rise. 

Within weeks his name was everywhere. The Tisza party was revived and repurposed. It had existed as an irrelevant party before, but its name was adopted and reborn as a vehicle for Magyar. Tisza is a river in Hungary that has many romantic connections to Hungarian culture through folktales, folk music, and pop songs from the 60s. But his rise was so quick and so fast that it could not have been organic, which is the narrative that Tisza likes to spin.

His rise also came with massive international backing. Again, this is denied, but Hungary is not a GoFundMe country. It’s not a place where politicians are backed by microdonations. That doesn’t happen, but it’s a good story that people outside of Hungary can swallow. He has people abroad who have backed him and believe “anyone is a better choice than Orbán.”

Now that he’s in power, his anger is openly visible. Tisza won hands down. It has a supermajority in Parliament. But there is no graciousness from him in victory. It’s pretty clear that he is a kick-them-when-they’re-down person, which is not very appealing. If you were to say, “He’s out for revenge,” you’d be eerily accurate when it comes to how he is acting and how Tisza is ruling in Parliament. 

But the Hungarians voted for him in free and fair democratic elections — like every election in Hungary has been since 1990. And the electorate that supports him wants to see results for what they see as the crimes of Fidesz over the last 16 years. 

What would you say were Orbán’s main errors during the last campaign?

I would say time was always a problem. When you’re in power for 16 years, it’s just too long for Europeans to bear. Whether with Thatcher, Blair, Merkel or other European leaders, 10 years is the limit, I feel. After this, no matter how good you are, voters want change for change’s sake. I know many Hungarians who voted for Tisza, not because they liked either TIsza or Magyar, but because they wanted to see a change — to have something different.

But the even bigger problem was the obvious cronyism and the less visible corruption that Hungarians felt was happening but couldn’t exactly see. When the best friend of Viktor Orbán, an average tradesman, becomes the richest man in Hungary through government contracts over and over again (L?'rincz Mészáros), people become suspicious.

When the prime minister’s son-in-law suddenly becomes a very successful property developer with a large luxury hotel portfolio (Tiborcz), it raises eyebrows. He’s so successful that he loses track of what Hungarian wealth is and drives around in a convertible purple Bentley. When Fidesz politicians enter Parliament listing two apartments in their wealth declarations but four years later have 27 or 40+ (Rogán, Lázár), it’s clear something is going on.

When Fidesz politicians are discovered to have arranged for a famous painting by a Hungarian artist to hang in their mother’s flat (Rogán) for $50 per month, then they don’t apologize for abusing their position but lie that everyone can do it. Or the son of the once head of the National Bank, Matolcsy, who spent his time in Budapest and Dubai letting his Instagram wife flaunt jewelry and fast cars when they had no income and her father-in-law was a politician.

People noticed these things and grew tired of it. And Fidesz people grew so comfortable in their lifestyle that they ignored the impending backlash and decided to just let things be rather than clamp down on the people who were clearly doing things that were either immoral or illegal. 

To make things worse, Fidesz rewarded their own with do-nothing middle-management you-can-never-be-fired jobs all around the country. Citizens all over Hungary suddenly were passed over by, or worked under, people who were not qualified but were close to Fidesz. 

This is why Fidesz lost the countryside, a region that was their stronghold. Farmers and countryfolk were not swayed by social media or by the news, but by the things they saw and experienced. 

The creation of an us-vs-them society is what doomed Fidesz in the end. They came into power to get rid of a system like this but ended up creating one themselves. Now Tisza is here, and they are doing the same thing. Everyone associated with Fidesz must go, only Tisza people can stay.

What is the base of Magyar's movement? Could he reshape Hungary’s domestic politics?

He won over all the young people, but they rarely count in the long run. He is threatening to lower the voting age to 16, because he understands his social media reach means he could gain a solid cushion there. 

He got the middle class who felt they could never get ahead because of Fidesz-linked people who could not be removed and fired.

He has the backing of all liberals and left-wingers and socialists. His cabinet is at least two-thirds socialist, in Hungarian terms at least. The minister of Health, the minister of Culture, the minister of Education, the head of the prime minister’s office, these are all card- carrying left-wingers. 

He already has reshaped Hungarian domestic politics, with the help of his supermajority and the ability to change the constitution. They introduced a retroactive amendment, which is unheard of, specifically targeting one man, Viktor Orbán, forbidding him from running for office again. They introduced a retroactive amendment to the Constitution, forbidding those with 12 years under their belt from running for election to Parliament again. And this law only targets Fidesz, making more than half of their current MPs now ineligible for the next election. So Tisza has changed the rules to get rid of Fidesz.

It is early days yet, but judging by how Tisza has acted so far, they have no shame in changing rules to help themselves. So time will tell, but I don’t think the constitutional amendments and lawfare have even really started in Hungary. 

What about Hungary’s relationship with the European Union? Do you think he will turn off border security or pro-family policies?

Hungary will have a closer relationship with the European Union, because Tisza will do what Brussels wants. We are in the middle of an energy crisis, and this week Hungary has done what the EU wanted and pledged to build wind turbines all over. This is a failed strategy pushed by von der Leyen.

Border security has already changed. As of June 12, Hungary changed the rules allowing immigrants to apply for asylum at the border. Up until then, Hungary had a policy similar to Poland, which was that you could only apply elsewhere. This is funny, because when Magyar changed it, he said that “Hungary’s policy should be like Poland’s,” which it no longer is. 

By the end of July, we have started to notice that more immigrants are coming — although we are talking dozens here, not thousands. It’s only a trickle, but in homogenous Hungary, this trickle is obvious. 

The pro-family policies were always mocked by the Left, and that’s no different now. One of the first things Tisza did was speak about Pride, about gay rights, about gays being allowed to adopt children. So far, they haven’t changed any of the pro-family policies of Fidesz, but it’s clear that love-is-love will be more of a priority.

What is happening with the case of the former Culture Minister? 

Balázs Hankó’s department is in the middle of a scandal to do with 17 billion HUF in missing funds.

These were funds designated for culture that were funneled elsewhere and not handed out fairly. Pro-Fidesz musicians were feted and rewarded (Edda, Ákos, Mága Zoltán), and many funds were used not for culture at all, but to push local Fidesz politicians through events dotted around the country. Several of his staff have been arrested already and are in detention, while Hankó himself enjoys parliamentary immunity.

Is it possible they change the immunity laws for him? Yes. But the case around culture is both small overall, and I think the easiest to prosecute. In total, Peter Magyar says that 1300 billion HUF were misspent, wasted, and effectively stolen. Of that, 17 billion is a drop in the ocean. But culture resonates with the electorate as they know the names involved. 

The question is whether Hankó himself knew what was happening (likely but not sure), or was he there simply as part of the Fidesz marketing machine to sign papers (less likely but also possible).

Do you think there will be persecution against voices close to Fidesz?

One hundred percent. Just this week, the Parliament voted for the creation of an “independent” body called the National Asset Recovery and Protection Office (NVVH). The main tasks of the NVVH are to review suspicious or unlawful asset transfers and contracts affecting public assets over the past 20 years.

Their goal is to track down assets originating from corruption-suspect transactions both domestically and abroad; to offer professional assistance to and coordination of criminal proceedings with investigative authorities; to apply every lawful legal instrument to recover state or municipal assets that were unlawfully appropriated; and to examine state concession contracts and company networks, as well as follow the trail of money through offshore and domestic structures.

This all sounds good, but it has no judicial oversight. This group can kick in your door, take things away, examine whatever, and the only body it reports to is Parliament. Magyar says it will be independent, but if the body effectively reports to his team, i.e. him, just how independent can it be? Opponents fear, rightly in my opinion, that it won’t take long for this system to be abused and that it harkens back to the darkest days of communism and the ÁVH (nastiest secret police, torturers).

Sure, there are a lot of people they could go after at the beginning. I've listed a few, but if you gave me a day, I could probably produce a shortlist of 100. But what happens when that list is over? Where will the body turn next? Who will be in the crosshairs of a department with this much power, and effectively no oversight? It can run ex officio right now.