The image of Viktor Orban
Orbán's blend of soft Euroscepticism, populism, and national conservatism has seen him compared to politicians and political parties as diverse as Jarosław Kaczyński's Law and Justice, Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia, Matteo Salvini's Lega (previously Lega Nord), Marine Le Pen's National Rally, Donald Trump, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Vladimir Putin. Orbán has sought to make Hungary an "ideological center for ... an international conservative movement".
According to Politico, Orbán's political philosophy "echoes the resentments of what were once the peasant and working classes" by promoting an "uncompromising defense of national sovereignty and a transparent distrust of Europe's ruling establishments". Orbán frequently emphasizes the importance of Christianity, although he and the overwhelming majority of Hungarians do not attend church regularly. His authoritarian appeal to "global conservatives" has been summarized by Lauren Stokes as: "I alone can save you from the ravages of Islamization and totalitarian progressivism – and in the face of all that, who has time for checks and balances and rules?".
Orbán had a close relationship with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, having known him for decades. He is described as "one of Mr Netanyahu's closest allies in Europe". Orbán received personal advice on economic reforms from Netanyahu, while the latter was Finance Minister of Israel (2003–2005). In February 2019, Netanyahu thanked Orbán for "deciding to extend the embassy of Hungary in Israel to Jerusalem".
Orbán is seen as having laid out his political views most concretely in a widely cited 2014 public address at Băile Tușnad (known in Hungary as the Tusnádfürdői beszéd, or "Tusnádfürdő speech"). In the address, Orbán repudiated the classical liberal theory of the state as a free association of atomistic individuals, arguing for the use of the state as the means of organizing, invigorating, or even constructing the national community. Although this kind of state respects traditionally liberal concepts like civic rights, it is properly called "illiberal" because it views the community, and not the individual, as the basic political unit. In practice, Orbán claimed, such a state should promote national self-sufficiency, national sovereignty, familialism, full employment and the preservation of cultural heritage.
Orbán's second and third premierships have been the subject of significant international controversy, and reception of his political views is mixed. The 2011 constitutional changes enacted under his leadership were, in particular, accused of centralizing legislative and executive power, curbing civil liberties, restricting freedom of speech, and weakening the Constitutional Court and judiciary. For these reasons, critics have described him as an "irredentist", a "right-wing populist", an "authoritarian", "far-right", a "fascist", "autocratic", a "Putinist", a "strongman", and a "dictator".
The European migrant crisis, coupled with continued Islamist terrorism in the European Union, have popularized Orbán's nationalist, protectionist policies among European conservative leaders. "Once ostracized" by Europe's political elite, writes Politico, Orbán "is now the talisman of Europe's mainstream right".
As mentioned above, Orbán has promoted the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. In a 2018 speech, he stated: "I think there are many people who would like to see the end of Christian Europe, and they believe that if they replace its cultural subsoil, if they bring in millions of people from new ethnic groups which are not rooted in Christian culture, then they will transform Europe according to their conception."
During a press conference in January 2019, Orbán praised Brazil's then president Jair Bolsonaro, saying that currently "the most apt definition of modern Christian democracy can be found in Brazil, not in Europe".
In support of Orbán and his ideas, a think tank called the Danube Institute was established in 2013, funded by the Batthyány Foundation, which in turn is "funded entirely by the Hungarian government". Batthyány "sponsors international conferences and three periodicals, all in English: European Conservative, Hungarian Review, and Hungarian Conservative". In 2020, the institute began hosting fellows.
Orbán often attacked the administrations of presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, particularly for their supposed pro-immigration policies. Some analysts argue that Orban's attacks on the US are largely political theater for his domestic voters. In January 2022, Donald Trump endorsed Orbán in the 2022 Hungarian parliamentary election, saying in a statement that he "truly loves his Country and wants safety for his people", and praising his hard-line immigration policies. Donald Trump's former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, once called Orbán "Trump before Trump".
In August 2021, Tucker Carlson hosted some episodes of his show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, from Budapest, praising Orbán as the one elected leader "on the face of the earth, ... who publicly identifies as a Western-style conservative". He also conducted a fifteen-minute interview with Orbán, which was widely criticized for its fawning nature and lack of challenging questions.
In May 2022 the Conservative Political Action Conference, the "flagship conference" of American conservatism, held a satellite event in Budapest. In Florida, a law regulating sex education in schools, sometimes called the "Don’t Say Gay" law, resembles a similar Hungarian law passed in 2021 and was, according to governor Ron DeSantis's press secretary, inspired by it.
In August 2022, Orbán was the opening speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas.
Viktor Orbán's domestic policy agenda has placed emphasis on cultural conservatism, especially through pro-natalist policies designed to encourage family formation and reduce immigration. Female university graduates who have (or adopt) children within two years of graduation receive partial or full forgiveness on their student loans, including a full write-off of their student debt if they have three or more children. Hungarian women who have four or more children are eligible for full income tax exemption for life. Married couples are eligible for low fixed-rate mortgages on a house with additional financial support through family housing benefits, as well as subsidies for the purchase of seven-seat cars for families with three or more children and financial support for child care. In support of these policies, Orbán stated in 2019 that "For the west, the answer is immigration. For every missing child there should be one coming in and then the numbers will be fine. But we do not need numbers. We need Hungarian children." The government has also tightened legal regulations on access to abortion, including requiring pregnant women to listen to the heartbeat of the fetus prior to an abortion being approved by a doctor. The number of abortions procured in Hungary between 2010 and 2021 fell almost 50%, from 34 per hundred live births in 2010 to 23.7 per hundred in 2021.
His government's economic approach has been referred to as "Orbánomics". Despite early concerns that these reforms would undermine investor confidence, economic growth has been strong with unemployment "plummeting" between 2010 and 2021 and year-on-year GDP growth at 4 percent in 2021. Progressive taxation on income was abolished in 2015 and replaced with a flat rate of 16% on gross income, and income taxes on those aged 25 years or younger was abolished entirely in 2021. Hungary paid the last of its IMF loan ahead of schedule in 2013, with the fund closing its Budapest office later that year. Due to the economic impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as well as the shocks of COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns, Orbán's government has imposed windfall taxes on banks, pharmaceutical companies, and energy companies in order to maintain a government-subsidized cap on utility bills (including gas, electricity, water, district heating, sewage, and garbage collection) which continues into 2023.
Orbán's government has encouraged and provided financial support for the establishment of conservative think-tanks and cultural institutions. The Mathias Corvinus Collegium has purchased stakes in several European universities and has purchased the Modul University in Vienna. The thinktank's Brussels branch opened in November 2022. In 2021, Orbán's government passed a bill which privatized 11 Hungarian universities and subsequently were endowed billions of euros in assets from the state budget, as well as real estate and shares in large companies. The government has appointed conservatives to the supervisory boards of these universities.
As part of a drive to "re-Christianize" the country, his government has privatised many previously state-run schools and enlisted Christian churches to provide education, introduced religion classes into the national education curriculum, and provided financial support to more Christian schools. The country's kindergarten curriculum was amended to promote "national identity, Christian cultural values, patriotism, attachment to homeland and family". Between 2010 and 2018, the number of Catholic schools increased from 9.4 percent to 18 percent. The government also created the Center for Fundamental Rights (Hungarian: Alapjogokért Központ) in 2013 who describe their mission as "preserving national identity, sovereignty and Christian social traditions". In 2019 the government passed a law taking control of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
As stated by The Guardian, the "Hungarian government doubled family spending between 2010 and 2019", intending to achieve "a lasting turn in demographic processes by 2030". Orbán has espoused an anti-immigration platform, and has also advocated for increased investment into "Family First". Orbán has disregarded the European Union's attempts to promote integration as a key solution to population distribution problems in Europe. He has also supported investments into countering the country's low birth rates. Orbán has tapped into the "great replacement theory" which emulates a nativist approach to rejecting foreign immigration out of fear of replacement by immigrants. He has stated that "If Europe is not going to be populated by Europeans in the future and we take this as given, then we are speaking about an exchange of populations, to replace the population of Europeans with others." The Guardian stated that "This year the Hungarian government introduced a 10 million forint (£27,000) interest-free loan for families, which does not have to be paid back if the couple has three children."
Between 2010 and 2020, Hungary dropped 69 places in the Press Freedom Index, lost 11 places in the Democracy Index, and deteriorated 16 places in the Corruption Perceptions Index. In 2019 Freedom House downgraded the country from "free" to "partly free". The V-Dem Democracy indices rank Hungary in 2021 as 96th in its "electoral democracy index" that measures "whether elections were free and fair, as well as the prevalence of a free and independent media", sitting between Benin and Malaysia. Additionally, Freedom House's Nations in Transit 2020 report reclassified Hungary from a democracy to a transitional or hybrid regime. Furthermore, in 2022, the European Parliament stated that "Hungary can no longer be considered a full democracy" and that the country has become an "electoral autocracy".
The late professor of economics at Harvard University, János Kornai, described the evolution of the Hungarian state during Orbán's second premiership as having taken a "u-turn" away from the aim of becoming a market economy based on the rule of law and private ownership and instead beginning the "systematic destruction of the fundamental institutions of democracy". In her 2015 article on Orbán's illiberal democracy, Dr. Abby Innes, associate professor of political economy at the London School of Economics simply states that "Hungary can no longer be ranked a democratic country". Former minister of education, Bálint Magyar, has stated that elections in Hungary under Orbán are undemocratic and "free but not fair", due to gerrymandering, large-scale control over the media, and suspect funding for political campaigns.
In the April 2022 election, Orbán's Fidesz party won 54% of the vote but 83% of the districts, due to gerrymandering, and "other tweaks" to Hungarian electoral rules. According to American journalist and author Andrew Marantz, Orbán passed laws, amended the constitution and "patiently debilitated, delegitimatized, hollowed out" civic institutions such as courts, universities, and the apparatus necessary for free elections that are now controlled by Orbán loyalists. Domination of the public media by Orbán prevents the public from hearing critics' point of view. In 2022, Orbán's opponent was given just five minutes on the national television "to make his case to the voters". Private media outlets like the ATV and RTL, among others, offered playtime for opposition members. An example of the discreet, below-the-radar process of accumulating power by Orbán and his party was the creation of a special police force that started as a small anti-terror unit. The unit grew and became more powerful "bit by bit in disparate clauses buried in unrelated laws". Marantz cites Princeton professor of sociology Kim Lane Scheppele, who contends the unit now has enough power to function "essentially" as Orbán's "secret police".
Hungarian political scientist András Körösényi [hu], using Max Weber's classification, argues that Orbán's rule cannot be described simply by the notions of authoritarianisation or illiberalism. He stresses out that the Orbán regime can be characterised as plebiscitary leadership democracy instead. In addition, extensive research has been conducted to describe the idea of a "national, sovereign, bourgeois Hungary" stated as the goal of Orbán's rule, is in fact a "political product" of a post-communist mafia state serving to obscure massive corruption and transfers of wealth to those with the right connections.
Since his election as prime minister in 2010, Orbán has led initiatives and laws to hinder human rights of LGBT+ people, regarding such rights as "not compatible with Christian values". In 2020, Orbán's government ended legal recognition of transgender people, receiving criticism both in Hungary and abroad.
In 2021 his party proposed new legislation to censor any "LGBT+ positive content" in movies, books or public advertisements and to severely restrict sex education in school forbidding any information thought to "encourage gender change or homosexuality". The law has been likened to Russia's restriction on "homosexual propaganda". German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen harshly criticized the law, while a letter from sixteen EU leaders including Pedro Sánchez and Mario Draghi warned against "threats against fundamental rights and in particular the principle of non-discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation".
His anti-LGBT+ positions came under more scrutiny after the revelation that one of the European deputies of his party, József Szájer, had participated in a gay sex party in Brussels, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic quarantine restrictions. Szájer was one of the major architects behind the 2011 Constitution of Hungary. This new constitution has been criticized by Human Rights Watch for being discriminatory towards the LGBT+ community.
To coincide with the parliamentary election in the spring of 2022, Orbán announced a four-question referendum regarding LGBTQ issues in education. It did not pass. It came after complaints from the European Union (EU) about anti-LGBTQ discriminatory laws. Human rights groups condemned the referendum as anti-LGBT rhetoric that supported discrimination. On July 22, 2023, in a speech he gave in Romania, Orbán complained that the EU was conducting an "LGBTQ offensive".
Orbán's critics have included domestic and foreign leaders (including former United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the Presidents of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, and Jean-Claude Juncker), intergovernmental organizations, and non-governmental organizations. He has been accused of pursuing anti-democratic reforms; attacking the human rights of the LGBT community; reducing the independence of Hungary's press, judiciary and central bank; amending Hungary's constitution to prevent amendments to Fidesz-backed legislation; and of cronyism and nepotism.
Orbán was accused of pork barrel politics for building Pancho Aréna, a 4,000-seat stadium in the village in which he grew up, Felcsút, at a distance of some 6 metres (20 ft) from his country house. In the book The Ark of Orbán, Attila Antal wrote that the Orbán system of governance is characterized by the transformation of public money into private money, a system that has built a neo-feudal world of national capitalists, centered on the prime minister and his own family business interests. The largest share of national capitalists is the oligarchy "produced" by the system, such as István Tiborcz, who is closest to Viktor Orbán, and Lőrinc Mészáros and his family.
A 2016 opinion piece for The New York Times by Kenneth Krushel called Orbán's political system a kleptocracy that wipes some of the country's wealth partly into its own pockets and partly into the pockets of people close to it. A 2017 Financial Times article compared the Hungarian elite under Orbán's government to Russian oligarchs. The article noted that they differ in that Hungary's "Oligarchs" under Orbán largely benefit from EU subsidies, unlike the Russian oligarchs. The article also mentioned the sudden increase in the personal wealth of Orbán's childhood friend, Lőrinc Mészáros, thanks to winning state contracts. A 2019 New York Times investigation revealed how Orbán leased plots of farm land to politically connected individuals and supporters of his and his party, thereby channeling disproportionate amounts of the EU's agricultural subsidies Hungary receives every year into the pockets of cronies.
Some opposition parties and critics also consider Orbán an opponent of European integration. In 2000, opposition parties MSZP and SZDSZ and the left-wing press presented Orbán's comment that "there's life outside the EU" as proof of his anti-Europeanism and sympathies with the radical right. In the same press conference, Orbán clarified that "It will not be a tragedy if we cannot join the EU in 2003. (...) But this is not what we are preparing for. We are trying to urge our integration [into the EU], because it may give a new push to the economy."
Hungarian-American business magnate and political activist George Soros criticized Orbán's handling of the European migrant crisis in 2015, saying: "His plan treats the protection of national borders as the objective and the refugees as an obstacle. Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle."
Orbán has been criticized for engineering the 2015 European migrant crisis for his own political gain. Specifically, he has been accused of mistreating migrants within Hungary and later sending many to Western Europe in an effort to stoke far-right sympathies in Western European countries. During the crisis, Orbán ordered fences be put up across the Hungarian borders with Serbia and Croatia and refused to comply with the European Union's mandatory asylum quota. In 2015, The New York Times acknowledged that Orbán's stance on migration is slowly becoming mainstream in European politics. Andrew Higgins interviewed Orbán's ardent critic, György Konrád, who said that Orbán was right and Merkel was
According to Politico, Orbán's political philosophy "echoes the resentments of what were once the peasant and working classes" by promoting an "uncompromising defense of national sovereignty and a transparent distrust of Europe's ruling establishments". Orbán frequently emphasizes the importance of Christianity, although he and the overwhelming majority of Hungarians do not attend church regularly. His authoritarian appeal to "global conservatives" has been summarized by Lauren Stokes as: "I alone can save you from the ravages of Islamization and totalitarian progressivism – and in the face of all that, who has time for checks and balances and rules?".
Orbán had a close relationship with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, having known him for decades. He is described as "one of Mr Netanyahu's closest allies in Europe". Orbán received personal advice on economic reforms from Netanyahu, while the latter was Finance Minister of Israel (2003–2005). In February 2019, Netanyahu thanked Orbán for "deciding to extend the embassy of Hungary in Israel to Jerusalem".
Orbán is seen as having laid out his political views most concretely in a widely cited 2014 public address at Băile Tușnad (known in Hungary as the Tusnádfürdői beszéd, or "Tusnádfürdő speech"). In the address, Orbán repudiated the classical liberal theory of the state as a free association of atomistic individuals, arguing for the use of the state as the means of organizing, invigorating, or even constructing the national community. Although this kind of state respects traditionally liberal concepts like civic rights, it is properly called "illiberal" because it views the community, and not the individual, as the basic political unit. In practice, Orbán claimed, such a state should promote national self-sufficiency, national sovereignty, familialism, full employment and the preservation of cultural heritage.
Orbán's second and third premierships have been the subject of significant international controversy, and reception of his political views is mixed. The 2011 constitutional changes enacted under his leadership were, in particular, accused of centralizing legislative and executive power, curbing civil liberties, restricting freedom of speech, and weakening the Constitutional Court and judiciary. For these reasons, critics have described him as an "irredentist", a "right-wing populist", an "authoritarian", "far-right", a "fascist", "autocratic", a "Putinist", a "strongman", and a "dictator".
The European migrant crisis, coupled with continued Islamist terrorism in the European Union, have popularized Orbán's nationalist, protectionist policies among European conservative leaders. "Once ostracized" by Europe's political elite, writes Politico, Orbán "is now the talisman of Europe's mainstream right".
As mentioned above, Orbán has promoted the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. In a 2018 speech, he stated: "I think there are many people who would like to see the end of Christian Europe, and they believe that if they replace its cultural subsoil, if they bring in millions of people from new ethnic groups which are not rooted in Christian culture, then they will transform Europe according to their conception."
During a press conference in January 2019, Orbán praised Brazil's then president Jair Bolsonaro, saying that currently "the most apt definition of modern Christian democracy can be found in Brazil, not in Europe".
In support of Orbán and his ideas, a think tank called the Danube Institute was established in 2013, funded by the Batthyány Foundation, which in turn is "funded entirely by the Hungarian government". Batthyány "sponsors international conferences and three periodicals, all in English: European Conservative, Hungarian Review, and Hungarian Conservative". In 2020, the institute began hosting fellows.
Orbán often attacked the administrations of presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, particularly for their supposed pro-immigration policies. Some analysts argue that Orban's attacks on the US are largely political theater for his domestic voters. In January 2022, Donald Trump endorsed Orbán in the 2022 Hungarian parliamentary election, saying in a statement that he "truly loves his Country and wants safety for his people", and praising his hard-line immigration policies. Donald Trump's former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, once called Orbán "Trump before Trump".
In August 2021, Tucker Carlson hosted some episodes of his show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, from Budapest, praising Orbán as the one elected leader "on the face of the earth, ... who publicly identifies as a Western-style conservative". He also conducted a fifteen-minute interview with Orbán, which was widely criticized for its fawning nature and lack of challenging questions.
In May 2022 the Conservative Political Action Conference, the "flagship conference" of American conservatism, held a satellite event in Budapest. In Florida, a law regulating sex education in schools, sometimes called the "Don’t Say Gay" law, resembles a similar Hungarian law passed in 2021 and was, according to governor Ron DeSantis's press secretary, inspired by it.
In August 2022, Orbán was the opening speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas.
Viktor Orbán's domestic policy agenda has placed emphasis on cultural conservatism, especially through pro-natalist policies designed to encourage family formation and reduce immigration. Female university graduates who have (or adopt) children within two years of graduation receive partial or full forgiveness on their student loans, including a full write-off of their student debt if they have three or more children. Hungarian women who have four or more children are eligible for full income tax exemption for life. Married couples are eligible for low fixed-rate mortgages on a house with additional financial support through family housing benefits, as well as subsidies for the purchase of seven-seat cars for families with three or more children and financial support for child care. In support of these policies, Orbán stated in 2019 that "For the west, the answer is immigration. For every missing child there should be one coming in and then the numbers will be fine. But we do not need numbers. We need Hungarian children." The government has also tightened legal regulations on access to abortion, including requiring pregnant women to listen to the heartbeat of the fetus prior to an abortion being approved by a doctor. The number of abortions procured in Hungary between 2010 and 2021 fell almost 50%, from 34 per hundred live births in 2010 to 23.7 per hundred in 2021.
His government's economic approach has been referred to as "Orbánomics". Despite early concerns that these reforms would undermine investor confidence, economic growth has been strong with unemployment "plummeting" between 2010 and 2021 and year-on-year GDP growth at 4 percent in 2021. Progressive taxation on income was abolished in 2015 and replaced with a flat rate of 16% on gross income, and income taxes on those aged 25 years or younger was abolished entirely in 2021. Hungary paid the last of its IMF loan ahead of schedule in 2013, with the fund closing its Budapest office later that year. Due to the economic impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as well as the shocks of COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns, Orbán's government has imposed windfall taxes on banks, pharmaceutical companies, and energy companies in order to maintain a government-subsidized cap on utility bills (including gas, electricity, water, district heating, sewage, and garbage collection) which continues into 2023.
Orbán's government has encouraged and provided financial support for the establishment of conservative think-tanks and cultural institutions. The Mathias Corvinus Collegium has purchased stakes in several European universities and has purchased the Modul University in Vienna. The thinktank's Brussels branch opened in November 2022. In 2021, Orbán's government passed a bill which privatized 11 Hungarian universities and subsequently were endowed billions of euros in assets from the state budget, as well as real estate and shares in large companies. The government has appointed conservatives to the supervisory boards of these universities.
As part of a drive to "re-Christianize" the country, his government has privatised many previously state-run schools and enlisted Christian churches to provide education, introduced religion classes into the national education curriculum, and provided financial support to more Christian schools. The country's kindergarten curriculum was amended to promote "national identity, Christian cultural values, patriotism, attachment to homeland and family". Between 2010 and 2018, the number of Catholic schools increased from 9.4 percent to 18 percent. The government also created the Center for Fundamental Rights (Hungarian: Alapjogokért Központ) in 2013 who describe their mission as "preserving national identity, sovereignty and Christian social traditions". In 2019 the government passed a law taking control of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
As stated by The Guardian, the "Hungarian government doubled family spending between 2010 and 2019", intending to achieve "a lasting turn in demographic processes by 2030". Orbán has espoused an anti-immigration platform, and has also advocated for increased investment into "Family First". Orbán has disregarded the European Union's attempts to promote integration as a key solution to population distribution problems in Europe. He has also supported investments into countering the country's low birth rates. Orbán has tapped into the "great replacement theory" which emulates a nativist approach to rejecting foreign immigration out of fear of replacement by immigrants. He has stated that "If Europe is not going to be populated by Europeans in the future and we take this as given, then we are speaking about an exchange of populations, to replace the population of Europeans with others." The Guardian stated that "This year the Hungarian government introduced a 10 million forint (£27,000) interest-free loan for families, which does not have to be paid back if the couple has three children."
Between 2010 and 2020, Hungary dropped 69 places in the Press Freedom Index, lost 11 places in the Democracy Index, and deteriorated 16 places in the Corruption Perceptions Index. In 2019 Freedom House downgraded the country from "free" to "partly free". The V-Dem Democracy indices rank Hungary in 2021 as 96th in its "electoral democracy index" that measures "whether elections were free and fair, as well as the prevalence of a free and independent media", sitting between Benin and Malaysia. Additionally, Freedom House's Nations in Transit 2020 report reclassified Hungary from a democracy to a transitional or hybrid regime. Furthermore, in 2022, the European Parliament stated that "Hungary can no longer be considered a full democracy" and that the country has become an "electoral autocracy".
The late professor of economics at Harvard University, János Kornai, described the evolution of the Hungarian state during Orbán's second premiership as having taken a "u-turn" away from the aim of becoming a market economy based on the rule of law and private ownership and instead beginning the "systematic destruction of the fundamental institutions of democracy". In her 2015 article on Orbán's illiberal democracy, Dr. Abby Innes, associate professor of political economy at the London School of Economics simply states that "Hungary can no longer be ranked a democratic country". Former minister of education, Bálint Magyar, has stated that elections in Hungary under Orbán are undemocratic and "free but not fair", due to gerrymandering, large-scale control over the media, and suspect funding for political campaigns.
In the April 2022 election, Orbán's Fidesz party won 54% of the vote but 83% of the districts, due to gerrymandering, and "other tweaks" to Hungarian electoral rules. According to American journalist and author Andrew Marantz, Orbán passed laws, amended the constitution and "patiently debilitated, delegitimatized, hollowed out" civic institutions such as courts, universities, and the apparatus necessary for free elections that are now controlled by Orbán loyalists. Domination of the public media by Orbán prevents the public from hearing critics' point of view. In 2022, Orbán's opponent was given just five minutes on the national television "to make his case to the voters". Private media outlets like the ATV and RTL, among others, offered playtime for opposition members. An example of the discreet, below-the-radar process of accumulating power by Orbán and his party was the creation of a special police force that started as a small anti-terror unit. The unit grew and became more powerful "bit by bit in disparate clauses buried in unrelated laws". Marantz cites Princeton professor of sociology Kim Lane Scheppele, who contends the unit now has enough power to function "essentially" as Orbán's "secret police".
Hungarian political scientist András Körösényi [hu], using Max Weber's classification, argues that Orbán's rule cannot be described simply by the notions of authoritarianisation or illiberalism. He stresses out that the Orbán regime can be characterised as plebiscitary leadership democracy instead. In addition, extensive research has been conducted to describe the idea of a "national, sovereign, bourgeois Hungary" stated as the goal of Orbán's rule, is in fact a "political product" of a post-communist mafia state serving to obscure massive corruption and transfers of wealth to those with the right connections.
Since his election as prime minister in 2010, Orbán has led initiatives and laws to hinder human rights of LGBT+ people, regarding such rights as "not compatible with Christian values". In 2020, Orbán's government ended legal recognition of transgender people, receiving criticism both in Hungary and abroad.
In 2021 his party proposed new legislation to censor any "LGBT+ positive content" in movies, books or public advertisements and to severely restrict sex education in school forbidding any information thought to "encourage gender change or homosexuality". The law has been likened to Russia's restriction on "homosexual propaganda". German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen harshly criticized the law, while a letter from sixteen EU leaders including Pedro Sánchez and Mario Draghi warned against "threats against fundamental rights and in particular the principle of non-discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation".
His anti-LGBT+ positions came under more scrutiny after the revelation that one of the European deputies of his party, József Szájer, had participated in a gay sex party in Brussels, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic quarantine restrictions. Szájer was one of the major architects behind the 2011 Constitution of Hungary. This new constitution has been criticized by Human Rights Watch for being discriminatory towards the LGBT+ community.
To coincide with the parliamentary election in the spring of 2022, Orbán announced a four-question referendum regarding LGBTQ issues in education. It did not pass. It came after complaints from the European Union (EU) about anti-LGBTQ discriminatory laws. Human rights groups condemned the referendum as anti-LGBT rhetoric that supported discrimination. On July 22, 2023, in a speech he gave in Romania, Orbán complained that the EU was conducting an "LGBTQ offensive".
Orbán's critics have included domestic and foreign leaders (including former United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the Presidents of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, and Jean-Claude Juncker), intergovernmental organizations, and non-governmental organizations. He has been accused of pursuing anti-democratic reforms; attacking the human rights of the LGBT community; reducing the independence of Hungary's press, judiciary and central bank; amending Hungary's constitution to prevent amendments to Fidesz-backed legislation; and of cronyism and nepotism.
Orbán was accused of pork barrel politics for building Pancho Aréna, a 4,000-seat stadium in the village in which he grew up, Felcsút, at a distance of some 6 metres (20 ft) from his country house. In the book The Ark of Orbán, Attila Antal wrote that the Orbán system of governance is characterized by the transformation of public money into private money, a system that has built a neo-feudal world of national capitalists, centered on the prime minister and his own family business interests. The largest share of national capitalists is the oligarchy "produced" by the system, such as István Tiborcz, who is closest to Viktor Orbán, and Lőrinc Mészáros and his family.
A 2016 opinion piece for The New York Times by Kenneth Krushel called Orbán's political system a kleptocracy that wipes some of the country's wealth partly into its own pockets and partly into the pockets of people close to it. A 2017 Financial Times article compared the Hungarian elite under Orbán's government to Russian oligarchs. The article noted that they differ in that Hungary's "Oligarchs" under Orbán largely benefit from EU subsidies, unlike the Russian oligarchs. The article also mentioned the sudden increase in the personal wealth of Orbán's childhood friend, Lőrinc Mészáros, thanks to winning state contracts. A 2019 New York Times investigation revealed how Orbán leased plots of farm land to politically connected individuals and supporters of his and his party, thereby channeling disproportionate amounts of the EU's agricultural subsidies Hungary receives every year into the pockets of cronies.
Some opposition parties and critics also consider Orbán an opponent of European integration. In 2000, opposition parties MSZP and SZDSZ and the left-wing press presented Orbán's comment that "there's life outside the EU" as proof of his anti-Europeanism and sympathies with the radical right. In the same press conference, Orbán clarified that "It will not be a tragedy if we cannot join the EU in 2003. (...) But this is not what we are preparing for. We are trying to urge our integration [into the EU], because it may give a new push to the economy."
Hungarian-American business magnate and political activist George Soros criticized Orbán's handling of the European migrant crisis in 2015, saying: "His plan treats the protection of national borders as the objective and the refugees as an obstacle. Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle."
Orbán has been criticized for engineering the 2015 European migrant crisis for his own political gain. Specifically, he has been accused of mistreating migrants within Hungary and later sending many to Western Europe in an effort to stoke far-right sympathies in Western European countries. During the crisis, Orbán ordered fences be put up across the Hungarian borders with Serbia and Croatia and refused to comply with the European Union's mandatory asylum quota. In 2015, The New York Times acknowledged that Orbán's stance on migration is slowly becoming mainstream in European politics. Andrew Higgins interviewed Orbán's ardent critic, György Konrád, who said that Orbán was right and Merkel was
