Hungary’s Tisza party won parliamentary elections on April 12, bringing an end to the 16-year tenure of Viktor Orbán as prime minister. The result is a seismic one for Hungarian domestic politics. But it is also a major development in the trajectory of Hungary’s relations with the EU.
Throughout Orbán’s term, but particularly since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he was consistently a thorn in the side of the EU. He flouted European norms, values and legislation as he went about building what he called an “illiberal state”.
One example was his 2011 decision to lower the mandatory retirement age for Hungarian judges and prosecutors from 70 to 62. This forced a large proportion of the country’s judiciary into retirement, allowing Orbán to replace them with party loyalists. The European Court of Justice ruled against the change in 2013, but many of Orbán’s appointees remained in their positions.
