04. listopadu, 2026 Péter Bori
When Péter Magyar’s TISZA party won Hungary’s elections in April with a two-thirds majority, it not only ended 16 years of increasingly autocratic rule by Viktor Orbán and his FIDESZ-KDNP party, but also signalled a rearrangement in Hungary’s broader geopolitical positioning.
Throughout his years in power – and especially during Donald Trump’s presidencies – Orbán attempted to walk a risky and contentious tightrope between Russian and American interests. Indeed, the Orbán government maintained close ties with the Kremlin, blocking or delaying key EU measures to support Ukraine and impose sanctions on Russia and influential Russian individuals. Simultaneously, he became a staunch supporter of Trump’s increasingly populist politics, exemplified amongst others by the allocation of hundreds of millions of taxpayer forints to host the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Budapest for five consecutive years. Conversely, Orbán’s own model of illiberal democratic populism came to be heralded by the Trump administration as an inspiring model to follow. In 2024, Trump said of Orbán that “there is nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic”.
Throughout their political relationship, both Orbán and Trump followed a similar logic: bet on your strongman mates and your mates will help you out when needed. A diplomatic strategy that works, but only while you or your mates are in power. Under the presidencies of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Orbán’s dual positioning strategy led to a strained relationship between the two countries, resulting in both diplomatic tension and tangible sanctions against senior Hungarian politicians and travel restrictions for Hungarian citizens. Then, as Trump assumed power, he granted Hungary a one-year exemption from U.S. sanctions affecting Russian oil and gas purchases, removed sanctions on senior aide Antal Rogán and restored travel freedoms for Hungarians. In the lead-up to the Hungarian elections in April, Trump endorsed Orbán and even sent Vice President JD Vance to Budapest just days before the election. The bet made by the U.S. president was clear.
Yet, Hungarian voters decided otherwise and elected Péter Magyar and his TISZA government, ousting Orbán and making him lose his first election since 2010. Trump, in line with his strongman logic, quickly downplayed his support for Orbán, saying ‘I wasn’t that involved in this one. Viktor’s a good man, though’. Of Péter Magyar, he said ‘I think the new man’s going to do a good job – he’s a good man.’
Trump’s quiet turn away from Orbán was echoed by Magyar’s description of America as an essential NATO partner and his wish for close cooperation with the country, despite Trump’s years-long support for Orbán. Indeed, the TISZA government committed to the NATO target of 5% GDP for defence and security-related spending and moved further away from Russia diplomatically – whilst seeking an extension of the sanctions exemptions for Russian energy.
Magyar’s foreign policy was to be one of more conventional, institution-based partnership, in contrast to Orbán’s highly personalised approach. Yet, in an international political ecosystem dominated by increasingly divisive ideological camps, to what extent is such an approach realistic?
The Partnership Agreement signed in October signals that Magyar’s ideology-free foreign policy strategy may be harder to implement than he thinks – and that indeed, it may put him in rather tricky situations both domestically and in the European arena.
A key purpose of the meeting between Hungarian Foreign Minister Anita Orbán (unrelated to Viktor Orbán) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio was to get Hungary on board with Trump’s Peace Pipeline Project, aimed at expanding energy infrastructure across Central and Eastern Europe and promoting American natural gas instead of Russian supplies.
Voicing commitment to Trump’s project is not necessarily antithetical to Hungary’s energy needs. The country’s excessive reliance on Russian gas and crude oil imports makes it particularly vulnerable to geopolitical and interpersonal political conflict. Diversification away from Russian energy is therefore a long-overdue item in Hungarian energy policy.
Yet, whether doing so through shifting dependency on potentially more expensive American imports and costly infrastructural developments is the best way forward remains to be seen. Furthermore, there is a broader issue that is unvoiced in government communication on the agreement: that the Peace Pipeline poses a renewed threat to the decarbonisation of a region already significantly behind on European climate targets. As Hungary is picking up the pieces of an unprecedentedly dry summer and coming to terms with the well and true arrival of the climate crisis, making further commitments to fossil fuel consumption is questionable, at best.
The most obvious indication of the tricky paths Magyar and his government must navigate when it comes to Trump is found in the second partnership agreement. It is common practice in diplomacy to bundle together various policy themes and strategies – and use your negotiating partner’s needs as leverage to get them on board for your own.
The second agreement asserts Hungary’s cooperation in fighting far-left terrorism – a theme that has been at the forefront of the Trump administration’s agenda. Citing the civil unrest following George Floyd’s murder, protests against ICE raids and Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Trump has issued the National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 in 2025 as a tool to fight what he perceives to be ‘radical left terrorism’. Legitimate questions arise about whether Trump uses such labels to simply target political opponents and enforce significantly more severe prosecution strategies against protesters.
What is, however, an even more obvious conundrum in Hungary pledging its support for such an agreement is that far-left terrorism is a largely marginal phenomenon in Hungary – or the broader CEE region for that matter. In 2023, a group of militant anti-fascists, including activists from Germany and Italy, carried out coordinated attacks against far-right sympathisers in Budapest. The attackers selected their victims based on their clothing, followed and assaulted them at selected locations. The case received widespread attention, and some perpetrators were apprehended, identified and sentenced.
However, the case’s uniqueness lies in the very fact that it was a mostly unprecedented case of far-left violence. In comparison, Hungary has repeatedly been host to instances of far-right aggression, from the 2008 Roma killings to the 2016 neo-Nazi killing of a police officer, as well as organised intimidation by the likes of the Hungarian Guard, Betyársereg and the Hungarian National Front.
The fact that far-left terrorism exists at best in the peripheries of the Hungarian psyche was well exemplified by the fact that in announcing the agreement to Hungarian audiences the Foreign Minister left out the words ‘far-left’, instead simply referring to an agreement to fight terrorism. Despite promoting centre-right conservative Christian values, the TISZA party won its landslide election in no small part thanks to the support of a large base of progressive left voters, disillusioned by the failures of the Hungarian political left over the last two decades. Therefore, allying with a far-right American president to fight a perceived far-left terrorism may prove to be a useful short-term diplomatic move, but may end up as a highly costly political choice domestically.
For Hungary, Orbán’s highly personalised and ideologically based relationship with the United States meant being exposed to shifting and unpredictable political, diplomatic and administrative changes. Magyar has voiced that he intends to pursue a politics based on mutual respect, institutional cooperation and shared geopolitical interests. However, pursuing an ideology-free politics in a world dominated by partisan and ideology-laden politics may prove somewhat challenging.
This article was produced as part of the project Foreign Policy of the V4 Countries in a Changing World. The project is co-funded by the governments of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad grants from the International Visegrad Fund. The Fund’s mission is to promote the principles of sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.
ROČNÍK XV. – 3. ČÍSLO, ZÁŘÍ 2026