“We are ready to work with the new Hungarian government,” said European Council President António Costa, as Viktor Orbán left office.
Hungary’s new Prime Minister Péter Magyar was sworn in on Saturday, ending Viktor Orbán’s 16-year hold on power and raising hopes for a rapprochement with the EU.
Magyar, whose Tisza party won last month’s parliamentary elections in a landslide, was voted in during a ceremony in the parliament building in Budapest, where the EU flag was flying for the first time in a decade. The blue and gold banner was reinstated by the incoming speaker, reversing an Orbán-era decision to remove it.
“I wish all the best to Péter Magyar and Hungary,” European Council President António Costa told reporters at simultaneous celebrations marking Europe Day in Brussels. “It is a new chapter in Hungarian history and we are ready to work with the new Hungarian government.”
Magyar has vowed a reset with Brussels to try to secure around €10 billion in EU funds frozen as a result of backsliding over human rights and the rule of law in recent years.
The center-right Hungarian flew to Brussels for talks with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week as the new administration scrambles to meet an August deadline to show progress on reforms or risk losing access to the money altogether.
Tisza, formed by Magyar in 2020 after he left Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party, won 141 of the 200 available parliamentary seats in April’s nationwide vote, giving the party the two-thirds supermajority required to make constitutional changes.
Orbán, along with many of his top allies, has said he will not take his seat in the new parliament, but made an appearance Friday on a Hungarian-language YouTube channel to insist he would face any investigation into his conduct and is innocent of any wrongdoing.
However, the departure of Orbán — who had consistently used his veto in the European Council to block support for Ukraine and oppose sanctions on Russia — comes as his longtime ally, Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico, doubles down on support for the Kremlin.
Fico was the only EU leader to fly to Moscow on Saturday for a visit coinciding with Russia’s Victory Day events, which are taking place this year without the usual parade of tanks and rocket launchers as a result of dwindling supply of hardware and the risk of Ukrainian drones.