Peter Magyar won by an overwhelming margin of two-thirds. He delivered his victory speech to thousands of young and less people on the banks of the Danube. He called out the name of President Tamás Sulyok, Orbán’s trusted ally, asking him to confer the mandate upon him 'as soon as possible' before resigning himself. Magyar announced plans for a new anti-corruption agency and judicial reform, as well as trips to Warsaw and Brussels to unblock twenty billion euros in frozen EU funds. ‘The Hungarians have said yes to Europe,’ he declared. It was an extraordinary night, and anyone who loves democracy must be happy about it.

And yet. Who exactly won, and against what?

To grasp the scope of this victory, it is necessary to understand what Orbán has built over the last sixteen years. It's not just an authoritarian government that has won many elections in a system that the European Parliament has labelled an 'electoral autocracy'. It is something more precise and harder to dismantle: the systematic takeover of every state institution, largely financed with money from European taxpayers.

The process has been methodical. Since 2010, Fidesz has rewritten the constitution, redrawn electoral districts to suit its own needs and appointed loyalists to every key position with multi-year terms specifically designed to outlast any changes in government. The attorney general, the president of the Supreme Court and all fifteen judges of the Constitutional Court have all been appointed by Orbán. The Budget Council, which has veto power over the budget law, is composed of loyalists with terms ranging from six to twelve years. Hundreds of matters have been brought under the regime of 'cardinal laws', which require a two-thirds majority in parliament to be amended. It is a system designed to endure even after an electoral defeat.

Then there is the money. By the end of 2017, 80% of European structural funds for the 2014–2021 period had already been allocated, with €5.6 billion spent in December of that year alone — just months before the 2018 elections. It was a frantic rush that everyone in Brussels saw, yet no one stopped it. As a Hungarian journalist wrote at the time with bitter precision: 'Orbán is Putinizing Hungary with EU funds.' It was not hyperbole. It was an accurate description. The media — newspapers, radio, television and even health service apps — were bought up one by one and handed over to the regime’s oligarchs. This was a system of buying consent on the cheap, largely funded by Brussels, which the European Parliament had been denouncing since 2012, while the Commission and the Council turned a blind eye.

Peter Magyar didn’t come from outside to dismantle all this. He came from the inside. He had been an active member of Fidesz for over twenty years, having joined the party while still a student. He was fascinated by the image of the young Orbán, who in 1989 demanded the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Heroes’ Square. He worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then at the Hungarian Mission to the European Union in Brussels, and later in the Prime Minister’s office. He married Judit Varga, who went on to become Orbán’s Minister of Justice. He headed a state-owned bank and then a student loan agency. By all accounts, he was a man of the system.

However, the break came in February 2024, when a scandal involving a pardon granted to a man accused of child sexual abuse engulfed President Katalin Novák and Varga herself, forcing them to resign. Magyar seized this opportunity to give an explosive interview to the independent channel Partizan, making direct accusations of systemic corruption against the regime and revealing insider information. The interview received millions of views. Within a few weeks, he took over the little party TISZA, named after the Tisza river, and four months later, he led the party to 30% in the European elections. This background makes him both effective and difficult to decipher. He knows how the system works from the inside. His indictment of the regime is not that of an ideological opponent denouncing it from the outside; rather, it is that of a witness describing what he has seen. This has made him credible to a very broad electorate, much broader than his personal political positions.

This is where the most interesting political paradox lies. Magyar is a Catholic conservative who sits in the EPP, uses quotes from John Paul II in his campaigns, opposes European migrant quotas, takes a cautious stance on same-sex marriage and is in favour of holding a referendum on Ukraine’s NATO membership. He is not a progressive, he does not want to be one, and he has never pretended to be one. Yet it was largely urban, progressive and liberal voters, Gen Z youth, who carried him to victory. The queues at Budapest's polling stations, the impromptu celebrations in the streets and the turnout of almost 80%, the highest in Hungary's post-communist history and surpassing even the first free elections of 1990, tell their own story. That crowd wasn’t celebrating Magyar’s platform. They were celebrating the end of Orbán. Magyar was the instrument. He was the only candidate capable of reaching the two-thirds majority needed to rewrite the rules of the game, given the electoral system redesigned to guarantee Fidesz’s victory.

TISZA’s platform is titled 'For an Efficient and Humane Hungary'. The subtitle alone speaks volumes: it is not an ideological programme, but a management programme. Certain personnel choices speak volumes: Magyar has recruited István Kapitány, former global vice president of Shell, and Anita Orbán (no relation), former Cheniere consultant and former Fidesz energy security envoy, for energy. This is not exactly the profile of someone convinced of the need for an ecological transition. At the European level, the priorities are clear: unlock frozen funds, restore the rule of law, bring Hungary into the eurozone and end its dependence on Russian energy by 2035. This last point is significant: Orbán built an energy-political dependence on Russia, enshrined in a secret twelve-point agreement with Moscow revealed by Politico. This agreement provided for new projects on hydrogen, electricity, oil, gas and nuclear fuel. Magyar wants to break free from this, but the 2035 timeline does not align with the urgency of the climate crisis. Furthermore, the focus of his energy team is more on securing fossil fuel supplies than on the green transition. On other issues, caution is evident: no migrant quotas, no troops to Ukraine, and a referendum on NATO for Kyiv. This is a selective pro-European stance that promises a break from Orbán’s systematic obstructionism, but does not represent a shift towards a federalist or environmentalist Hungary. This is obviously not surprising.

Magyar holds two-thirds of parliament, which is the key difference compared to Tusk’s Poland. Tusk won in 2023 without that threshold, yet still finds itself grappling with a hostile Constitutional Court and a president who vetoes every reform. With a two-thirds majority, Magyar could rewrite the constitution, restore judicial independence, reform the electoral system and free up public media. The tools are there. However, the system doesn’t cease to exist the day after the election. 60% of key institutions' terms expire between 2027 and 2032, and Fidesz oligarchs control over 90% of the national media. This is why the call for President Sulyok’s resignation is not just a symbolic gesture; it marks the beginning of a potentially long and contentious transition battle. Magyar has already asked Orbán to 'refrain from any measures that limit the next government’s room to manoeuvre', a request that, given Orbán's character, may foreshadow ongoing conflict. Furthermore, clarification is necessary in light of the data emerging from the vote count. Fidesz won around 40% of the list votes. Orbán’s conservative and rural base has not crumbled. Magyar’s victory was not built on the erosion of the Orbán bloc, but on the extraordinary mobilisation of a progressive, urban and youthful electorate who voted en masse for the only tool capable of reaching a two-thirds majority to oust Orbán, even if they did not fully identify with its platform. This is a distinction that Magyar would be wise to never forget.

That silent coalition handed him the keys to the country. However, it did not hand them over forever, nor without conditions. Hungarian civil society, associations, independent journalists and activists who have resisted for sixteen years in difficult circumstances, cannot fade into the background now that there is a 'friendly' government. It must remain vigilant, push forward and disrupt when necessary, exactly as it has done so far. Progressive Europe, which celebrated on the night of 12 April, must also remain present and vigilant during the upcoming transition: providing funding, of course, but also monitoring how it is spent, supporting institutional reforms, and upholding a free press and Hungarian civil society. Magyar's victory is a necessary condition for a democratic Hungary. However, it is not sufficient on its own.