BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) \u2014 Hungary\u2019s incoming prime minister, P\u00e9ter Magyar, arrived Saturday at the Parliament building to be sworn into office, ending Viktor Orb\u00e1n \u2018s autocratic 16-year rule.<\/p>\n
Magyar\u2019s center-right Tisza party defeated Orb\u00e1n\u2019s nationalist-populist Fidesz in a stunning blow last month, gaining more votes and seats in Parliament than any other party in Hungary\u2019s post-Communist history.<\/p>\n
The win, which gave Tisza a two-thirds parliamentary majority, will allow it to roll back many of the policies that gave Orb\u00e1n a reputation among many of his critics as a far-right authoritarian, clamp down on alleged corruption and transform political dynamics within the European Union, where the former prime minister had upended the bloc by frequently vetoing key decisions.<\/p>\n
A Parliament without Orb\u00e1n<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Magyar entered the sprawling neo-Gothic parliament building alongside 140 of his party representatives, controlling 141 seats in Hungary\u2019s 199-seat parliament. Orb\u00e1n\u2019s Fidesz-KDNP coalition will control 52 seats, down from 135, while the far-right Mi Haz\u00e1nk (Our Homeland) party will hold six seats.<\/p>\n
The 199 representatives took their oaths of office at around 11 a.m. local time. Orb\u00e1n was not among them for the first time since Hungary\u2019s first post-Communist Parliament was formed in 1990.<\/p>\n
The new national assembly has 54 women lawmakers, most from the Tisza party \u2014 more than a quarter of the total and the most in Hungary\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
Magyar, a 45-year-old lawyer who founded Tisza in 2024 after years as an insider in Orb\u00e1n\u2019s party, has vowed to end official corruption, which he argues has robbed Hungarians of economic opportunity.<\/p>\n
The new prime minister has called on Hungarians to attend an all-day \u201cregime-change\u201d celebration outside Parliament to mark his inauguration and the end of the Orb\u00e1n era. Several thousand people had already gathered as the new representatives were sworn in.<\/p>\n
After he takes his oath at around 3 p.m. local time, Magyar is set to address the crowd outside.<\/p>\n
Repairing relations with the EU<\/p>\n
Magyar has promised to repair his country\u2019s ties with the EU, which Orb\u00e1n had pushed to the breaking point, and to restore Hungary\u2019s place among Western democracies, whose standing had been called into question as Orb\u00e1n drifted ever closer to Russia.<\/p>\n
Unlocking about 17 billion euros ($20 billion) of EU funds for Hungary frozen during Orb\u00e1n\u2019s time in office over rule-of-law and corruption concerns is among the incoming prime minister\u2019s top priorities. The money is sorely needed to help jump-start Hungary\u2019s struggling economy, which has stagnated for the last four years.<\/p>\n
In a sign of that commitment, Tisza officials say they will once again fly the EU flag on the Parliament building\u2019s facade after Orb\u00e1n\u2019s government removed it in 2014.<\/p>\n
A party to celebrate the end of Orb\u00e1n\u2019s rule<\/p>\n
Budapest\u2019s liberal mayor, Gergely Kar\u00e1csony, posted an open invitation to a party by the Danube River later Saturday to celebrate Orb\u00e1n\u2019s fall and the formation of the new government.<\/p>\n
Kar\u00e1csony wrote in a social media post the party was to express gratitude to Hungarians who have spent years speaking out against Orb\u00e1n\u2019s system: \u201cTeachers fired, civilians and journalists humiliated, small churches torn apart.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can finally leave this era behind us \u2014 but first, let us remember the everyday heroes and express our gratitude with a farewell to the system,\u201d he wrote on Facebook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) \u2014 Hungary\u2019s incoming prime minister, P\u00e9ter Magyar, arrived Saturday at the Parliament building to be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16416],"tags":[489,1102,1665,37821,934,51,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-65458","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-peter-magyar","8":"tag-corruption","9":"tag-democracy","10":"tag-general-news","11":"tag-landslides-and-mudslides","12":"tag-peter-magyar","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116553048558737511","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}