Hungarian opposition leader Magyar vows to move country back toward West

Magyar launches Tisza campaign in Budapest, vows to restore Westward ties with EU

Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar launched his election campaign in Budapest on Sunday, eight weeks before a pivotal vote against Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Magyar, who leads the center-right Tisza party, said he was speaking with a timetable that runs to April 12 and told supporters that “we’re standing on the threshold of victory with 56 days left to go.”

Magyar, a former insider in Orbán’s nationalist Fidesz party, broke with his prior political community and formed Tisza in 2024. After taking around 30% of the vote in Hungary’s European Parliament elections in June 2024, he has turned Tisza into the most formidable political force Orbán has faced during his 16 years in office, with most independent polls showing Tisza holding a significant lead ahead of the April election.

At the campaign launch, Magyar framed his bid as a change in direction for Hungary’s relationship with Europe. He pointed to meetings he said he held with numerous European leaders at the Munich Security Conference in Germany over the weekend, and he pledged to stop Hungary “drifting out of the European Union” under Orbán.

Magyar also made a domestic case centered on economic strain and corruption, describing Orbán’s government as having mismanaged the economy and social services. He said the government’s approach has allowed extreme wealth to accumulate within a small circle of well-connected insiders while leaving ordinary Hungarians behind, and he argued that unchecked corruption has been a driver of that outcome. “It is time to call corruption what it is: theft,” Magyar said at the event.

His remarks contrasted with statements Orbán made a day earlier at his own campaign launch, where Orbán argued the main threat facing Hungary was not military aggression from Russia but the European Union. Magyar said his program would also address foreign-policy and security questions, criticizing Orbán for what he called a combative foreign policy with the EU while maintaining close ties to Russia despite Russia’s war in neighboring Ukraine.

Tisza’s plan for government, Magyar said, is set out in a 239-page program released last week. Fidesz has not released a program, arguing that after governing for 16 years, its voters know what policy to expect, according to the reporting. Magyar used Sunday’s speech to reiterate several elements of Tisza’s governing approach, including a pledge to keep a border fence Hungary’s government built along the southern border in 2015 and to oppose illegal immigration.

The program also lays out what Magyar said would be a bid to bring home billions in funding the EU has suspended to Hungary over concerns that Orbán has eroded democratic institutions, reduced judicial independence, and failed to tackle corruption. Beyond EU funding, Tisza says it would oppose accelerated procedures for Ukraine to join the EU, while also committing to conditions for adopting the euro currency by 2030.

Magyar tied those promises to investments that he said are needed in sectors that have struggled, including health care and public transportation. He also said Tisza would crack down on corruption and seek to recover public funds the party argues have been funneled into the hands of government-connected oligarchs.

For the campaign rollout, Magyar said Tisza has built its slate of candidates in each of Hungary’s 106 individual voting constituencies largely from people active locally as entrepreneurs, doctors, economists, educators and other professionals. He said the party is positioning sectoral expertise as a contrast to what he describes as a lack of it under Orbán’s government, and he added that those candidates would help rebuild relations with Western partners and end Hungary’s international isolation.

Alongside Magyar, Tisza said it is leading the ticket with Anita Orbán, described as an international energy expert and not related to the prime minister. The party said it also includes former Shell executive István Kapitány, who it says would fill a senior economy role in a future Tisza government, with Magyar saying Sunday that he was proud the party’s experts are taking Hungary’s fundamental issues seriously.

“It is time to call corruption what it is: theft,” Magyar said earlier in the campaign speech, adding that his team would “serve” the country rather than “dominate” it as the April vote approaches.