Le Figaro said the “electoral earthquake” in Hungary had been strongly felt in Poland, where political divisions are comparable and where Orban’s illiberal model had long inspired the nationalist right when PiS was in power from 2015 to 2023.
The paper said PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński had “refrained from congratulating” election winner Peter Magyar, but knew that Orban’s defeat could affect “the dynamics of sovereigntists in Poland”, where attention is already turning to next year’s parliamentary vote.
According to the newspaper, the end of Orban’s rule put PiS in an awkward position, as its support for the Hungarian leader “did not produce the expected result”, nor did Polish President Karol Nawrocki’s official visit to Budapest a month before the election.
Die Zeit said Orban was not the only loser in the Hungarian election.
“The conclusion is clear”, the paper wrote. “If someone like Orban can lose power, even though he controlled almost all media, associations and universities, created an electoral system favorable to his party, and was backed by Trump, Putin, Xi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then others can do it too”.
The weekly said Orban’s defeat showed that the global turn toward the populist right, built on an alliance with U.S. President Donald Trump, could be halted and that liberals were not doomed.
For the pro-Trump MAGA movement and Europe’s far right, Budapest had been a “pilgrimage destination, Disneyland and laboratory of values of the international new right”, Die Zeit wrote, describing it as “white, national, Christian, family-friendly and anti-liberal”.
But the paper said “right-authoritarian glamour is losing its shine” and argued that leaders who align themselves with Trump risk electoral defeat.
It added that Hungary’s example showed the most effective answer to the far right did not have to come from the left. Magyar won, it said, because he was a conservative who kept his distance from pride parades, took a critical stance on migration, and valued checks and balances, the rule of law, decency and proper use of taxpayers’ money.
(jh)
Source: PAP, Polish Radio