BUDAPEST, Hungary\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Hungary\u2019s Peter Magyar took his oath of office on Saturday to become the country\u2019s new prime minister, kicking off a fresh political era after 16 years of Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s autocratic rule. <\/p>\n
Magyar\u2019s center-right Tisza party overwhelmingly defeated Orb\u00e1n\u2019s nationalist-populist Fidesz 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 as a far-right authoritarian. <\/p>\n
In a speech to tens of thousands of supporters in a square outside the parliament building after being sworn in, the new prime minister told the crowd: \u201cToday, every freedom-loving person in the world wants to be a little Hungarian.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have taught the country and the world that it is the most ordinary, flesh-and-blood people that can defeat the most vicious tyranny,\u201d Magyar said to roaring applause. <\/p>\n
As Hungary\u2019s new leader, Magyar has vowed to restore democratic institutions and governmental checks and balances that were heavily eroded during Orb\u00e1n\u2019s rule, and to clamp down on alleged corruption. <\/p>\n
His administration is expected to transform political dynamics within the European Union, where the former prime minister had upended the bloc by frequently vetoing key decisions, most recently concerning support for neighboring Ukraine. <\/p>\n
A parliament without Orb\u00e1n<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Magyar, a 45-year-old lawyer who founded Tisza in 2024, entered the sprawling neo-Gothic parliament building alongside 140 of his party representatives.<\/p>\n
Tisza now controls 141 seats in Hungary\u2019s 199-seat parliament. Orb\u00e1n\u2019s Fidesz-KDNP coalition controls 52 seats, down from 135, while the far-right Mi Haz\u00e1nk (Our Homeland) party holds six seats. <\/p>\n
The 199 representatives took their oaths of office around 11 a.m. Orb\u00e1n was not among them for the first time since Hungary\u2019s first post-Communist parliament was formed in 1990. <\/p>\n
Magyar earlier called on Hungarians to attend an all-day \u201cregime change\u201d celebration on Kossuth Square outside parliament to mark his inauguration and the end of the Orb\u00e1n era. Many of those gathered waved Hungarian and EU flags and wore Tisza T-shirts. <\/p>\n
In his speech, Magyar delivered a message of unity, and promised to help heal the deep social divisions he said Orb\u00e1n\u2019s government had sown. <\/p>\n
\u201cToday is the fulfillment of the long journey that we have made together in recent years, the fulfillment of the common belief that Hungary is able to get back on its feet, is able to believe in itself and to once again be a common homeland for all Hungarians,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Hungary\u2019s new National Assembly has 54 female lawmakers, most from the Tisza party \u2014 more than a quarter of the total and the most in Hungary\u2019s history. <\/p>\n
An attendee at the celebration, Andrea Szepesi, an economist from Budapest, said it was \u201cabout time\u201d that more women held seats in parliament. Under Orb\u00e1n\u2019s rule, there were fewer women in government than in nearly all of the EU\u2019s other 26 nations. <\/p>\n
\u201cFinally, women are able to participate in this new, beautiful democratic system and the flourishing of the country,\u201d Szepesi told the Associated Press. <\/p>\n
Repairing EU relations<\/p>\n
Magyar has promised to repair his country\u2019s ties with the European Union, which Orb\u00e1n had pushed to a 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
The EU flag was raised on the parliament building\u2019s facade Saturday afternoon for the first time since Orb\u00e1n\u2019s government removed it in 2014. <\/p>\n
Unlocking about $20 billion of EU funds for Hungary frozen during Orb\u00e1n\u2019s time in office over rule-of-law and corruption allegations is also among the new 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
Another attendee of the celebration, 27-year-old web designer \u00c1ron Farsang, said he expects the new Tisza government to restore Hungary\u2019s democratic institutions and to \u201clead us back toward the European Union.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI would also really like it if we could get rid of the Russian influence as soon as possible,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m thinking about energy dependency and their general political style.\u201d<\/p>\n
Accounting for the past<\/p>\n
Many of the nearly 3.4 million Hungarians who voted for Tisza expect Magyar to hold Fidesz officials and their business allies accountable for the perceived misconduct of the outgoing administration.<\/p>\n
In his speech to the National Assembly, he called on Fidesz-appointed heads of government institutions, including President Tam\u00e1s Sulyok, to resign no later than May 31. <\/p>\n
Magyar plans to form a National Asset Recovery and Protection Office, an authority tasked with investigating and seeking to recover public funds misused during Orb\u00e1n\u2019s tenure. He\u2019s also vowed to suspend the news services of Hungary\u2019s public broadcaster \u2014 widely seen as a mouthpiece of Orb\u00e1n\u2019s party \u2014 until objectivity can be restored.<\/p>\n
In his speech to lawmakers, Magyar referenced his intentions to hold former officials accountable for past abuses, saying voters had \u201cgiven us a mandate to open a new chapter in Hungary\u2019s history. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Spike writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BUDAPEST, Hungary\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Hungary\u2019s Peter Magyar took his oath of office on Saturday to become the country\u2019s new prime minister,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16416],"tags":[39365,3031,39364,383,422,14660,888,3591,388,39366,934,381,11042,28302,315,14587],"class_list":{"0":"post-67304","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-peter-magyar","8":"tag-celebration","9":"tag-country","10":"tag-first-time","11":"tag-government","12":"tag-hungary","13":"tag-magyar","14":"tag-office","15":"tag-orban","16":"tag-parliament","17":"tag-parliament-building","18":"tag-peter-magyar","19":"tag-prime-minister","20":"tag-rule","21":"tag-seat","22":"tag-speech","23":"tag-tisza"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116560087134493993","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67304","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=67304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}