You have likely heard of the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán
Viktor Mihály Orbán (born 31 May 1963) is a Hungarian lawyer and politician who has been Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010, previously holding the office from 1998 to 2002. He has led the Fidesz political party since 1993, with a break between 2000 and 2003. Orbán studied law at Eötvös Loránd University before entering politics in the wake of the Revolutions of 1989. Orbán already headed the Hungarian dissident student movement and became nationally known after a 1989 speech in which he openly demanded that Soviet armed forces leave the People's Republic of Hungary. After the end of communism in Hungary in 1989 followed by transition to a multiparty democracy the following year, Orbán was elected to the National Assembly and led Fidesz's parliamentary caucus until 1993.
During Orbán's first term as prime minister, from 1998 to 2002 with him as the head of a conservative coalition government, inflation and the fiscal deficit shrank and Hungary joined NATO. Orbán was the Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2010. In 2010, Orbán was again elected prime minister. Central issues during Orbán's second premiership include controversial constitutional and legislative reforms, in particular the 2013 amendments to the Constitution of Hungary, as well as the European migrant crisis, the lex CEU, and the COVID-19 pandemic in Hungary. He was reelected in 2014, 2018, and 2022. On 29 November 2020, he became the country's longest-serving prime minister.
Starting with the Second Orbán Government in 2010, during his uninterrupted stay in power, Orbán has curtailed press freedom, weakened judicial independence, and undermined multiparty democracy, amounting to democratic backsliding during Orbán's tenure. He frequently styles himself as a defender of Christian values in the face of the European Union, which he claims is anti-nationalist and anti-Christian. His portrayal of the EU as a political foe while accepting its money and funneling it to his allies and relatives has led to accusations that his government represents a kleptocracy. It has also been characterized as a hybrid regime, dominant-party system, and mafia state.
Orbán defends his policies as "illiberal Christian democracy". As a result, Fidesz was suspended from the European People's Party from March 2019; in March 2021, Fidesz left the EPP over a dispute over new rule-of-law language in the latter's bylaws. In a July 2022 speech, Orbán criticized the miscegenation of European and non-European races, saying: "We [Hungarians] are not a mixed race and we do not want to become a mixed race." Two days later in Vienna, he clarified that he was talking about cultures and not about genetics. His tenure has seen Hungary's government shift towards what he has called "illiberal democracy", while simultaneously promoting Euroscepticism and opposition to liberal democracy and establishment of closer ties with China and Russia.
Orbán was born on 31 May 1963 in Székesfehérvár into a rural middle-class family as the eldest son of the agronomist, mechanical engineer and later construction businessman Győző Orbán (born 1940) and the special educator and speech therapist, Erzsébet Sípos (born 1944). He has two younger brothers, both businessmen, Győző Jr. (born 1965) and Áron (born 1977). His paternal grandfather, Mihály Orbán, a former dockworker and a war veteran, farmed and worked as a veterinary assistant in Alcsútdoboz in Fejér County, where Orbán first grew up. The family moved in 1973 to the neighbouring Felcsút, where Orbán's father was head of the machinery department at the local farm collective. Orbán attended school there and in Vértesacsa. His parents and his grandfather completed further education as adults and pursued their careers within the framework of economic liberalisation under the Kádár regime. In 1977, the family moved to Székesfehérvár, where Orbán had secured a place at the prestigious Blanka Teleki grammar school. In his first two years at the school, he served as local secretary of the Hungarian Young Communist League (KISZ), membership of which was mandatory in order to matriculate to a university, and of which his father was a patron.
During his high school years, Orbán developed an interest in football, and befriended his future political associate Lajos Simicska. After graduating in 1981, he completed his military service alongside Simicska. He was jailed several times for indiscipline, which included a failure to appear for duty during the 1982 FIFA World Cup and striking a non-commissioned officer during a personal altercation. His time in the army also coincided with the declaration of martial law in Poland in December 1981, which his friend Simicska criticised; Orbán recalled expecting to be mobilised to invade Poland. He would later state that military service had shifted his political views radically from the previous position of a "naive and devoted supporter" of the Communist regime. However, a state security report from May 1982, when his father was working on an engineering contract in Libya, still described him as "loyal to our social system".
Next, in 1983, Orbán went to study law at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. He joined an English-model residential college for law students from outside the capital, Jogász Társadalomtudományi Szakkollégium (Lawyers' Special College of Social Sciences), established in 1983 by the young lecturer István Stumpf under the protection of the latter's father-in-law, the minister of the interior István Horváth. Members of this college, which would be named after István Bibó in May 1989, were permitted to explore social sciences beyond the socialist canon and the "new" field of "bourgeois" political science in particular. It was there that Orbán met Gábor Fodor and László Kövér. He became chairman of the executive committee of the college's sixty students in 1984. He went on a series of trips to Poland with his classmates and lecturer Tamás Fellegi in 1984–1985 and again in 1987, during the third pastoral visit of John Paul II. Their Polish contacts all along were Małgorzata Tarasiewicz and Adam Jagusiak, members-to-be of the anti-Communist student movement Freedom and Peace from 1985. Orbán submitted his Master's thesis on the Polish Solidarity movement, based on interviews with its leaders, in 1986. In August 1986, shortly before Orbán's wedding with Dr Anikó Lévai in Szolnok in September of that year, a police source reported him to belong to an organisation whose members were lecturing in the USA or West Germany as "the country's expected future leaders" and receiving Western support, while also being privy to top-level government decisions through minister Horváth and enjoying full protection of the Budapest police (BRFK). The minister was expected to personally intervene to clear Orbán in particular of any sedition charges. After obtaining the higher degree of Juris Doctor in 1987, Orbán lived in Szolnok for two years, commuting to his job in Budapest as a sociologist at the Management Training Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. In November 1987, Orbán welcomed a group of 150 delegates from 17 countries to a two-day seminar on the Perestroika, conscientious objection and the prospects for a pan-European democratic movement, held at the Lawyers' Special College of Social Sciences with the backing of the European Network for East–West Dialogue.
In September 1989, Orbán took up a research fellowship at Pembroke College, Oxford, funded by the Soros Foundation which had employed him part-time since April 1988. He began work on the concept of civil society in European political thought under the guidance of Zbigniew Pełczyński. During this time, he unsuccessfully contested the Fidesz leadership elections in Budapest, which he lost to Fodor. In January 1990, he abandoned his project at Oxford and returned to Hungary with his family to run for a seat in Hungary's first post-communist parliament.
On 30 March 1988, at the Lawyers' Special College of Social Sciences, Orbán – alongside Stumpf, Fodor, Kövér and 32 other students and activists – founded the Alliance of Young Democrats (Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége, FIDESZ), a liberal-nationalist youth movement conceived as an overt political challenge to the Hungarian Young Communist League, whose members were banned from participation. The college journal Századvég (End of the Century), established with Orbán's help and funded by George Soros since 1985, now became the press organ of Fidesz. On 16 June 1989, Orbán gave a speech in Heroes' Square, Budapest, on the occasion of the reburial of Imre Nagy and other national martyrs of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. In his speech, he demanded free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops. The speech brought him to national prominence and announced the existence of Fidesz to the wider public. In the summer of 1989, he took part in the opposition round table talks, representing Fidesz alongside László Kövér. Fidesz became a political party in October 1989.
On returning home from Oxford, he secured the first spot on the Fidesz candidate list ahead of Fodor and was elected Member of Parliament from Pest County at the April 1990 election. He was appointed leader of the Fidesz's parliamentary group, in this capacity until May 1993.
On 18 April 1993, Orbán became the first president of Fidesz, replacing the national board that had served as a collective leadership since its founding. Under his leadership, Fidesz gradually transformed from a radical liberal student organization to a center-right people's party. The conservative turn caused a severe split in the membership. Several members left the party, including Péter Molnár, Gábor Fodor and Zsuzsanna Szelényi. Fodor and others later joined the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ), initially a strong ally of Fidesz, but later a political opponent. During the 1994 parliamentary election, Fidesz barely reached the 5% threshold. Orbán became MP from his party's Fejér County Regional List. He was chairman of the Committee on European Integration Affairs between 1994 and 1998. He was also a member of the Immunity, Incompatibility and Credentials Committee for a short time in 1995. Under his presidency, Fidesz adopted "Hungarian Civic Party" (Magyar Polgári Párt) to its shortened name in 1995. His party gradually became dominant in the right-wing of the political spectrum, while the former ruling conservative Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) had lost much of its support. From April 1996, Orbán was chairman of the Hungarian National Committee of the New Atlantic Initiative (NAI).
In September 1992, Orbán was elected vice chairman of the Liberal International. In November 2000, however, Fidesz left the Liberal International and joined the European People's Party (EPP). During the time, Orbán worked hard to unite the center-right liberal conservative parties in Hungary. At the EPP's Congress in Estoril in October 2002, he was elected vice-president, an office he held until 2012.
In 1998, Orbán formed a coalition with the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) and the Independent Smallholders' Party (FKGP). The coalition won the 1998 parliamentary elections with 42% of the national vote. Orbán became the second youngest prime minister of Hungary at the age of 35 (after András Hegedüs) and the first post-Cold War head of government in both eastern and central Europe who had not previously been a member of a communist party during the Soviet-era. The new government immediately launched a radical reform of state administration, reorganizing ministries and creating a superministry for the economy. In addition, the boards of the social security funds and centralized social security payments were dismissed. Following the German model, Orbán strengthened the prime minister's office and named a new minister to oversee the work of his cabinet.
In February, the government decided that plenary sessions of the Hungarian Parliament would be held only every third week. Opposition parties strongly opposed the change, arguing that it would reduce parliament's legislative efficiency and ability to supervise the government. In March, the government also tried to replace the National Assembly rule that requires a two-thirds majority vote with one of a simple majority, but the Constitutional Court ruled this unconstitutional. Two of Orbán's state secretaries in the prime minister's office had to resign in May, due to their implication in a bribery scandal involving the American military manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corporation. Before bids on a major jet-fighter contract, the two secretaries, along with 32 other deputies of Orbán's party, had sent a letter to two US senators to lobby for the appointment of a Budapest-based Lockheed manager to be the US ambassador to Hungary. On 31 August, the head of the Tax Office also resigned after protracted criticism by the opposition on his earlier, allegedly suspicious, business dealings.[citation needed] The government was also involved in a lengthy dispute with Budapest City Council the national government's decision in late 1998 to cancel two major urban projects: the construction of a new national theatre and of the fourth subway line.
Relations between the Fidesz-led coalition government and the opposition worsened in the National Assembly, where the two seemed to have abandoned all attempts at consensus-seeking politics. The government pushed to swiftly replace the heads of key institutions (such as the Hungarian National Bank chairman, the Budapest City Chief Prosecutor and the Hungarian Radio) with partisan figures. Although the opposition resisted, for example by delaying their appointing of members of the supervising boards, the government ran the institutions without the stipulated number of directors. In a similar vein, Orbán failed to show up for question time in parliament for periods of up to 10 months. His statements, such as "The parliament works without opposition too...", also contributed to the image of arrogant and aggressive governance.
A later report in March by the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists criticized the Hungarian government for improper political influence in the media, as the country's public service broadcaster teetered close to bankruptcy. Numerous political scandals during 2001 led to a de facto, if not actual, breakup of the coalition that held power in Budapest. A bribery scandal in February triggered a wave of allegations and several prosecutions against the Independent Smallholders' Party. The affair resulted in the ousting of József Torgyán from both the FKGP presidency and the top post in the Ministry of Agriculture. The FKGP disintegrated and more than a dozen of its MPs joined the government faction.
Mikuláš Dzurinda, Orbán and Günter Verheugen during the opening of the Mária Valéria Bridge across the Danube, connecting the Slovak town of Štúrovo with Esztergom, in Hungary, in November 2001
Orbán's economic policy was aimed at cutting taxes and social insurance contributions, while reducing inflation and unemployment. Among the new government's first measures was to abolish university tuition fees and reintroduce universal maternity benefits. The government announced its intention to continue the Socialist–Liberal stabilization program and pledged to narrow the budget deficit, which had grown to 4.5% of GDP. The previous Socialist government had almost completed the privatization of government-run industries and had launched a comprehensive pension reform. However, the Socialists had avoided two major socioeconomic issues: reform of health care and agriculture; these remained to be tackled by Orbán's government.
Economic successes included a drop in inflation from 15% in 1998 to 7.8% in 2001. Annual GDP growth rates were fairly steady under Orbán's tenure, ranging from 3.8% to 5.2%. The fiscal deficit fell from 3.9% in 1999 to 3.4% in 2001 and the ratio of the national debt decreased to 54% of GDP. Under the Orbán cabinet, there were realistic hopes that Hungary would be able to join the Eurozone by 2009. However, negotiations for entry into the European Union slowed in the fall of 1999, after the EU included six more countries (in addition to the original six) in the accession discussions. Orbán repeatedly criticized the EU for its delay. In March 1999, after Russian objections were overruled, Hungary joined NATO along with the Czech Republic and Poland. The Hungarian membership to NATO demanded its involvement in Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's Kosovo crisis and modernization of its army. NATO membership also dealt a blow to the economy because of a trade embargo imposed on Yugoslavia.
Hungary attracted international media attention in 1999 for passing the "status law" concerning estimated three-million ethnic Hungarian minorities in neighbouring Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia and Ukraine. The law aimed to provide education, health benefits and employment rights to members of those minorities, and was said to heal the negative effects of the disastrous 1920 Trianon Treaty.
Governments in neighbouring states, particularly Romania, claimed to be insulted by the law, which they saw as interference in their domestic affairs. Proponents of the status law countered that several of the countries criticizing the law themselves had similar constructs to provide benefits for their own minorities. Romania acquiesced after amendments following a December 2001 agreement between Orbán and Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Năstase; Slovakia accepted the law after further concessions made by the new government after the 2002 elections.
The level of public support for political parties generally stagnated, even with general elections coming in 2002. Fidesz and the main opposition Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) ran neck and neck in the opinion polls for most of the year, both attracting about 26% of the electorate. According to a September 2001 poll by the Gallup organization, however, support for a joint Fidesz – Hungarian Democratic Forum party list would run up to 33% of the voters, with the Socialists drawing 28% and other opposition parties 3% each.
Meanwhile, public support for the FKGP plunged from 14% in 1998 to 1% in 2001. As many as 40% of the voters remained undecided, however. Although the Socialists had picked their candidate for prime minister—former finance minister Péter Medgyessy—the opposition largely remained unable to increase its political support.[citation needed] The dark horse of the election was the radical nationalist Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MIÉP), with its leader, István Csurka's radical rhetoric. MIÉP could not be ruled out as the key to a new term for Orbán and his party should they be forced into a coalition after the 2002 elections.
The elections of 2002 were the most heated Hungary had experienced in more than a decade, and an unprecedented cultural-political division formed in the country. In the event, Orbán's group lost the April parliamentary elections to the opposition Hungarian Socialist Party, which set up a coalition with its longtime ally, the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats. Turnout was a record-high 70.5%. Beyond these parties, only deputies of the Hungarian Democratic Forum made it into the National Assembly. The populist Independent Smallholders' Party and the right Hungarian Justice and Life Party lost all their seats. Thus, the number of political parties in the new assembly was reduced from six to four.
Continued....
During Orbán's first term as prime minister, from 1998 to 2002 with him as the head of a conservative coalition government, inflation and the fiscal deficit shrank and Hungary joined NATO. Orbán was the Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2010. In 2010, Orbán was again elected prime minister. Central issues during Orbán's second premiership include controversial constitutional and legislative reforms, in particular the 2013 amendments to the Constitution of Hungary, as well as the European migrant crisis, the lex CEU, and the COVID-19 pandemic in Hungary. He was reelected in 2014, 2018, and 2022. On 29 November 2020, he became the country's longest-serving prime minister.
Starting with the Second Orbán Government in 2010, during his uninterrupted stay in power, Orbán has curtailed press freedom, weakened judicial independence, and undermined multiparty democracy, amounting to democratic backsliding during Orbán's tenure. He frequently styles himself as a defender of Christian values in the face of the European Union, which he claims is anti-nationalist and anti-Christian. His portrayal of the EU as a political foe while accepting its money and funneling it to his allies and relatives has led to accusations that his government represents a kleptocracy. It has also been characterized as a hybrid regime, dominant-party system, and mafia state.
Orbán defends his policies as "illiberal Christian democracy". As a result, Fidesz was suspended from the European People's Party from March 2019; in March 2021, Fidesz left the EPP over a dispute over new rule-of-law language in the latter's bylaws. In a July 2022 speech, Orbán criticized the miscegenation of European and non-European races, saying: "We [Hungarians] are not a mixed race and we do not want to become a mixed race." Two days later in Vienna, he clarified that he was talking about cultures and not about genetics. His tenure has seen Hungary's government shift towards what he has called "illiberal democracy", while simultaneously promoting Euroscepticism and opposition to liberal democracy and establishment of closer ties with China and Russia.
Orbán was born on 31 May 1963 in Székesfehérvár into a rural middle-class family as the eldest son of the agronomist, mechanical engineer and later construction businessman Győző Orbán (born 1940) and the special educator and speech therapist, Erzsébet Sípos (born 1944). He has two younger brothers, both businessmen, Győző Jr. (born 1965) and Áron (born 1977). His paternal grandfather, Mihály Orbán, a former dockworker and a war veteran, farmed and worked as a veterinary assistant in Alcsútdoboz in Fejér County, where Orbán first grew up. The family moved in 1973 to the neighbouring Felcsút, where Orbán's father was head of the machinery department at the local farm collective. Orbán attended school there and in Vértesacsa. His parents and his grandfather completed further education as adults and pursued their careers within the framework of economic liberalisation under the Kádár regime. In 1977, the family moved to Székesfehérvár, where Orbán had secured a place at the prestigious Blanka Teleki grammar school. In his first two years at the school, he served as local secretary of the Hungarian Young Communist League (KISZ), membership of which was mandatory in order to matriculate to a university, and of which his father was a patron.
During his high school years, Orbán developed an interest in football, and befriended his future political associate Lajos Simicska. After graduating in 1981, he completed his military service alongside Simicska. He was jailed several times for indiscipline, which included a failure to appear for duty during the 1982 FIFA World Cup and striking a non-commissioned officer during a personal altercation. His time in the army also coincided with the declaration of martial law in Poland in December 1981, which his friend Simicska criticised; Orbán recalled expecting to be mobilised to invade Poland. He would later state that military service had shifted his political views radically from the previous position of a "naive and devoted supporter" of the Communist regime. However, a state security report from May 1982, when his father was working on an engineering contract in Libya, still described him as "loyal to our social system".
Next, in 1983, Orbán went to study law at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. He joined an English-model residential college for law students from outside the capital, Jogász Társadalomtudományi Szakkollégium (Lawyers' Special College of Social Sciences), established in 1983 by the young lecturer István Stumpf under the protection of the latter's father-in-law, the minister of the interior István Horváth. Members of this college, which would be named after István Bibó in May 1989, were permitted to explore social sciences beyond the socialist canon and the "new" field of "bourgeois" political science in particular. It was there that Orbán met Gábor Fodor and László Kövér. He became chairman of the executive committee of the college's sixty students in 1984. He went on a series of trips to Poland with his classmates and lecturer Tamás Fellegi in 1984–1985 and again in 1987, during the third pastoral visit of John Paul II. Their Polish contacts all along were Małgorzata Tarasiewicz and Adam Jagusiak, members-to-be of the anti-Communist student movement Freedom and Peace from 1985. Orbán submitted his Master's thesis on the Polish Solidarity movement, based on interviews with its leaders, in 1986. In August 1986, shortly before Orbán's wedding with Dr Anikó Lévai in Szolnok in September of that year, a police source reported him to belong to an organisation whose members were lecturing in the USA or West Germany as "the country's expected future leaders" and receiving Western support, while also being privy to top-level government decisions through minister Horváth and enjoying full protection of the Budapest police (BRFK). The minister was expected to personally intervene to clear Orbán in particular of any sedition charges. After obtaining the higher degree of Juris Doctor in 1987, Orbán lived in Szolnok for two years, commuting to his job in Budapest as a sociologist at the Management Training Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. In November 1987, Orbán welcomed a group of 150 delegates from 17 countries to a two-day seminar on the Perestroika, conscientious objection and the prospects for a pan-European democratic movement, held at the Lawyers' Special College of Social Sciences with the backing of the European Network for East–West Dialogue.
In September 1989, Orbán took up a research fellowship at Pembroke College, Oxford, funded by the Soros Foundation which had employed him part-time since April 1988. He began work on the concept of civil society in European political thought under the guidance of Zbigniew Pełczyński. During this time, he unsuccessfully contested the Fidesz leadership elections in Budapest, which he lost to Fodor. In January 1990, he abandoned his project at Oxford and returned to Hungary with his family to run for a seat in Hungary's first post-communist parliament.
On 30 March 1988, at the Lawyers' Special College of Social Sciences, Orbán – alongside Stumpf, Fodor, Kövér and 32 other students and activists – founded the Alliance of Young Democrats (Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége, FIDESZ), a liberal-nationalist youth movement conceived as an overt political challenge to the Hungarian Young Communist League, whose members were banned from participation. The college journal Századvég (End of the Century), established with Orbán's help and funded by George Soros since 1985, now became the press organ of Fidesz. On 16 June 1989, Orbán gave a speech in Heroes' Square, Budapest, on the occasion of the reburial of Imre Nagy and other national martyrs of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. In his speech, he demanded free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops. The speech brought him to national prominence and announced the existence of Fidesz to the wider public. In the summer of 1989, he took part in the opposition round table talks, representing Fidesz alongside László Kövér. Fidesz became a political party in October 1989.
On returning home from Oxford, he secured the first spot on the Fidesz candidate list ahead of Fodor and was elected Member of Parliament from Pest County at the April 1990 election. He was appointed leader of the Fidesz's parliamentary group, in this capacity until May 1993.
On 18 April 1993, Orbán became the first president of Fidesz, replacing the national board that had served as a collective leadership since its founding. Under his leadership, Fidesz gradually transformed from a radical liberal student organization to a center-right people's party. The conservative turn caused a severe split in the membership. Several members left the party, including Péter Molnár, Gábor Fodor and Zsuzsanna Szelényi. Fodor and others later joined the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ), initially a strong ally of Fidesz, but later a political opponent. During the 1994 parliamentary election, Fidesz barely reached the 5% threshold. Orbán became MP from his party's Fejér County Regional List. He was chairman of the Committee on European Integration Affairs between 1994 and 1998. He was also a member of the Immunity, Incompatibility and Credentials Committee for a short time in 1995. Under his presidency, Fidesz adopted "Hungarian Civic Party" (Magyar Polgári Párt) to its shortened name in 1995. His party gradually became dominant in the right-wing of the political spectrum, while the former ruling conservative Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) had lost much of its support. From April 1996, Orbán was chairman of the Hungarian National Committee of the New Atlantic Initiative (NAI).
In September 1992, Orbán was elected vice chairman of the Liberal International. In November 2000, however, Fidesz left the Liberal International and joined the European People's Party (EPP). During the time, Orbán worked hard to unite the center-right liberal conservative parties in Hungary. At the EPP's Congress in Estoril in October 2002, he was elected vice-president, an office he held until 2012.
In 1998, Orbán formed a coalition with the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) and the Independent Smallholders' Party (FKGP). The coalition won the 1998 parliamentary elections with 42% of the national vote. Orbán became the second youngest prime minister of Hungary at the age of 35 (after András Hegedüs) and the first post-Cold War head of government in both eastern and central Europe who had not previously been a member of a communist party during the Soviet-era. The new government immediately launched a radical reform of state administration, reorganizing ministries and creating a superministry for the economy. In addition, the boards of the social security funds and centralized social security payments were dismissed. Following the German model, Orbán strengthened the prime minister's office and named a new minister to oversee the work of his cabinet.
In February, the government decided that plenary sessions of the Hungarian Parliament would be held only every third week. Opposition parties strongly opposed the change, arguing that it would reduce parliament's legislative efficiency and ability to supervise the government. In March, the government also tried to replace the National Assembly rule that requires a two-thirds majority vote with one of a simple majority, but the Constitutional Court ruled this unconstitutional. Two of Orbán's state secretaries in the prime minister's office had to resign in May, due to their implication in a bribery scandal involving the American military manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corporation. Before bids on a major jet-fighter contract, the two secretaries, along with 32 other deputies of Orbán's party, had sent a letter to two US senators to lobby for the appointment of a Budapest-based Lockheed manager to be the US ambassador to Hungary. On 31 August, the head of the Tax Office also resigned after protracted criticism by the opposition on his earlier, allegedly suspicious, business dealings.[citation needed] The government was also involved in a lengthy dispute with Budapest City Council the national government's decision in late 1998 to cancel two major urban projects: the construction of a new national theatre and of the fourth subway line.
Relations between the Fidesz-led coalition government and the opposition worsened in the National Assembly, where the two seemed to have abandoned all attempts at consensus-seeking politics. The government pushed to swiftly replace the heads of key institutions (such as the Hungarian National Bank chairman, the Budapest City Chief Prosecutor and the Hungarian Radio) with partisan figures. Although the opposition resisted, for example by delaying their appointing of members of the supervising boards, the government ran the institutions without the stipulated number of directors. In a similar vein, Orbán failed to show up for question time in parliament for periods of up to 10 months. His statements, such as "The parliament works without opposition too...", also contributed to the image of arrogant and aggressive governance.
A later report in March by the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists criticized the Hungarian government for improper political influence in the media, as the country's public service broadcaster teetered close to bankruptcy. Numerous political scandals during 2001 led to a de facto, if not actual, breakup of the coalition that held power in Budapest. A bribery scandal in February triggered a wave of allegations and several prosecutions against the Independent Smallholders' Party. The affair resulted in the ousting of József Torgyán from both the FKGP presidency and the top post in the Ministry of Agriculture. The FKGP disintegrated and more than a dozen of its MPs joined the government faction.
Mikuláš Dzurinda, Orbán and Günter Verheugen during the opening of the Mária Valéria Bridge across the Danube, connecting the Slovak town of Štúrovo with Esztergom, in Hungary, in November 2001
Orbán's economic policy was aimed at cutting taxes and social insurance contributions, while reducing inflation and unemployment. Among the new government's first measures was to abolish university tuition fees and reintroduce universal maternity benefits. The government announced its intention to continue the Socialist–Liberal stabilization program and pledged to narrow the budget deficit, which had grown to 4.5% of GDP. The previous Socialist government had almost completed the privatization of government-run industries and had launched a comprehensive pension reform. However, the Socialists had avoided two major socioeconomic issues: reform of health care and agriculture; these remained to be tackled by Orbán's government.
Economic successes included a drop in inflation from 15% in 1998 to 7.8% in 2001. Annual GDP growth rates were fairly steady under Orbán's tenure, ranging from 3.8% to 5.2%. The fiscal deficit fell from 3.9% in 1999 to 3.4% in 2001 and the ratio of the national debt decreased to 54% of GDP. Under the Orbán cabinet, there were realistic hopes that Hungary would be able to join the Eurozone by 2009. However, negotiations for entry into the European Union slowed in the fall of 1999, after the EU included six more countries (in addition to the original six) in the accession discussions. Orbán repeatedly criticized the EU for its delay. In March 1999, after Russian objections were overruled, Hungary joined NATO along with the Czech Republic and Poland. The Hungarian membership to NATO demanded its involvement in Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's Kosovo crisis and modernization of its army. NATO membership also dealt a blow to the economy because of a trade embargo imposed on Yugoslavia.
Hungary attracted international media attention in 1999 for passing the "status law" concerning estimated three-million ethnic Hungarian minorities in neighbouring Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia and Ukraine. The law aimed to provide education, health benefits and employment rights to members of those minorities, and was said to heal the negative effects of the disastrous 1920 Trianon Treaty.
Governments in neighbouring states, particularly Romania, claimed to be insulted by the law, which they saw as interference in their domestic affairs. Proponents of the status law countered that several of the countries criticizing the law themselves had similar constructs to provide benefits for their own minorities. Romania acquiesced after amendments following a December 2001 agreement between Orbán and Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Năstase; Slovakia accepted the law after further concessions made by the new government after the 2002 elections.
The level of public support for political parties generally stagnated, even with general elections coming in 2002. Fidesz and the main opposition Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) ran neck and neck in the opinion polls for most of the year, both attracting about 26% of the electorate. According to a September 2001 poll by the Gallup organization, however, support for a joint Fidesz – Hungarian Democratic Forum party list would run up to 33% of the voters, with the Socialists drawing 28% and other opposition parties 3% each.
Meanwhile, public support for the FKGP plunged from 14% in 1998 to 1% in 2001. As many as 40% of the voters remained undecided, however. Although the Socialists had picked their candidate for prime minister—former finance minister Péter Medgyessy—the opposition largely remained unable to increase its political support.[citation needed] The dark horse of the election was the radical nationalist Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MIÉP), with its leader, István Csurka's radical rhetoric. MIÉP could not be ruled out as the key to a new term for Orbán and his party should they be forced into a coalition after the 2002 elections.
The elections of 2002 were the most heated Hungary had experienced in more than a decade, and an unprecedented cultural-political division formed in the country. In the event, Orbán's group lost the April parliamentary elections to the opposition Hungarian Socialist Party, which set up a coalition with its longtime ally, the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats. Turnout was a record-high 70.5%. Beyond these parties, only deputies of the Hungarian Democratic Forum made it into the National Assembly. The populist Independent Smallholders' Party and the right Hungarian Justice and Life Party lost all their seats. Thus, the number of political parties in the new assembly was reduced from six to four.
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