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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Cas Mudde

Trump may be a liability and Orbán is gone, but Europe’s far right is not in decline

Hungary's prime minister-elect, Petér Magyar, speaks at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, on 4 May 2026. Magyar is due to be sworn in on 9 May.
Hungary's Petér Magyar, who will be sworn in as prime minister on 9 May, speaks at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, earlier this month. Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images

Viktor Orbán’s crushing defeat in last month’s Hungarian election has led to an outbreak of democratic optimism. Across the globe, democrats are drawing lessons from the results and speculating about the decline of the far right. There is simultaneously a consensus that Donald Trump has gone from inspiration to “liability” for the global far right.

While the fall of Orbán has great symbolic significance and important consequences for EU politics (see the EU-Ukraine deal), we should be very careful not to read too much into it for three reasons.

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