In addition, Orbán regularly tries to put pressure on the European Union, which has been examining cases against Hungary since 2018 for violations of the Union’s fundamental values. Since then, the EU has frozen some EU funds earmarked for Hungary. Last year, Orbán threatened that he would block the entire European Union budget if Hungary did not regain access to the funds. The EU gave in to the threat.
Orbán’s challenger Péter Magyar presented himself in the election campaign as a bourgeois-conservative but clearly pro-European reformer. The election program of his Tisza party focuses on strengthening independent institutions, consistently fighting corruption and releasing frozen EU funds for investments in health, education and infrastructure.
In terms of foreign policy, an analysis by the European Council on Foreign Relations describes Tisza’s line as pro-EU and more distant towards Russia, while at the same time continuing cautious, non-military support for Ukraine. In the European Parliament, Magyar’s MPs belong to the conservative EPP group.
The most important supporter for the incumbent Prime Minister is undoubtedly Donald Trump. On Tuesday, the US President sent his Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Budapest, where the US politician Orbán promised the full support of the United States. Orbán’s leadership is crucial to US national interests, Rubio said at a joint press conference with the Hungarian leader.
“The Prime Minister and the President (Donald Trump) have a very, very close personal and working relationship,” he said. When Trump took office at the beginning of last year, a “golden age” in Hungarian-American relations began, Orbán agreed. Before Trump’s first election as US President in 2016, he was the only head of government of an EU country to declare his unconditional support for Trump.
Meanwhile, Magyar is already making contacts with European heads of state and government in the event of his election victory in April. At the weekend, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, he met with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who wrote on the short message service X that former Polish President Jarosław Kaczyński had previously wanted to turn Warsaw into a second Budapest. “Today Budapest wants to be like Warsaw,” said Tusk, alluding to the similarities between his and Magyar’s liberal politics.
Several MEPs, including Daniel Freund of the Green Party, have also declared their support for the Hungarian opposition leader in recent months. Orbán “destroyed” the rule of law and democracy, said Freund in an interview with Deutsche Welle in December 2025.
