Péter Magyar was sworn in on Saturday as Hungary’s new prime minister, ending Viktor Orbán’s 16 years in power after a landslide parliamentary victory that handed Magyar’s center-right Tisza party a two-thirds majority and 141 seats in the 199-seat parliament. Orbán’s Fidesz-KDNP coalition was reduced to 52 seats, down from 135, while the far-right Mi Hazánk party won six seats.
Who Holds the Levers
Magyar, a 45-year-old lawyer who founded Tisza in 2024 after years as an insider in Orbán’s party, entered the sprawling neo-Gothic parliament building alongside 140 of his party representatives. The 199 representatives took their oaths of office at around 11 a.m. local time. Orbán was not among them for the first time since Hungary’s first post-Communist Parliament was formed in 1990.
Magyar earlier called on Hungarians to attend an all-day “regime-change” celebration on Kossuth Square outside Parliament to mark his inauguration and the end of the Orbán era. Thousands gathered in the square as the new representatives were sworn in, many waving Hungarian and EU flags and wearing Tisza T-shirts. At each glimpse of Magyar, the crowd cheered, while some booed lawmakers from Fidesz and the extreme right Our Homeland party.
One attendee, Erzsébet Medve, 68, who had come from Miskolc in north-eastern Hungary, said, “This is the first time I feel like it’s good to be Hungarian,” and added, “I feel like I could cry.” She said that as a school teacher she had long watched in frustration as Orbán and his Fidesz government left the education system deprived of funds. Sitting next to her, Marianna Szűcs, 70, said she hoped Hungary would become a more livable country and said, “Now we feel like our children and grandchildren have a future here.”
What the Crowd Saw
As the crowd watched the proceedings inside Parliament on large screens, cheers erupted when the newly elected speaker of the house, Ágnes Forsthoffer, announced that the EU flag would be returned to the building after it was taken down by Fidesz in 2014. The EU flag was raised on the Parliament building’s facade Saturday afternoon for the first time since Orbán’s government removed it in 2014.
Magyar told lawmakers after being sworn in that he would not use his office to “rule” Hungary, “but to serve my homeland.” He said, “I’m not standing here because I’m different from anyone else in the country. I stand here because millions of Hungarians decided that they want change. And this trust that we have received is both a weight of honor and a moral obligation, but also a wonderful feeling.” He also said voters had “given us a mandate to open a new chapter in Hungary’s history.”
Magyar said, “We must understand, however, that there can be no new beginning without reconciliation. There can be no reconciliation without justice. And there can be no justice without confronting the past.”
Promises From the New Administration
Magyar has vowed to restore democratic institutions and governmental checks and balances that were heavily eroded during Orbán’s rule, and to clamp down on alleged corruption. He has promised to repair Hungary’s ties with the EU, which Orbán had pushed to a breaking point, and to restore Hungary’s place among Western democracies, whose standing had been called into question as Orbán drifted ever closer to Russia.
Magyar also vowed to work with the EU to unlock billions in frozen EU funds. One report said unlocking about 17 billion euros, or $20 billion, of EU funds frozen during Orbán’s time in office over rule-of-law and corruption concerns is among the incoming prime minister’s top priorities, and that the money is needed to help jump-start Hungary’s struggling economy, which has stagnated for the past four years.
His government is expected to transform political dynamics within the European Union, where Orbán had frequently vetoed key decisions, most recently concerning support for neighboring Ukraine. Magyar has also vowed to suspend the news services of Hungary’s public broadcaster, widely seen as a mouthpiece of Orbán’s party, until objectivity can be restored. He plans to form a National Asset Recovery and Protection Office, an authority tasked with investigating and seeking to recover public funds misused during Orbán’s tenure.
The Guardian said Magyar had also met twice with EU officials and sent back the millions of Hungarian forints donated to him by an Orbán-linked supporter.
The Guardian said hints of the change were symbolically laced through the plans for the swearing-in, including several anthems to pay tribute to Hungary’s EU membership, its sizeable Roma minority, and ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries, and that the lawyer Vilmos Kátai-Németh was to become the country’s first visually impaired minister, taking on the portfolio of social and family affairs. It also said more than a quarter of lawmakers will be women, a record high in the country’s post-communist history.
Budapest’s liberal mayor, Gergely Karácsony, wrote on social media: “Teachers fired, civilians and journalists humiliated, small churches torn apart. We can finally leave this era behind us – but first, let us remember the everyday heroes and express our gratitude with a farewell to the system.”