Orbán’s defeat also shows that the European Union still serves a purpose

Viktor Orbán has been swept aside in the elections; after years of “illiberal democracy,” what little democracy remained following the Prime Minister’s assault was enough to oust him from office. 

Orbán did everything in his power to seize totalitarian control of every aspect of the country: he brought the press, the judiciary, universities, and, of course, all the ministries and the Office of the President under his control; he amended the electoral law to his advantage; he had his friends, Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu, threaten voters, but to no avail; he was swept away by a tide of dissatisfied Hungarians. 

Of course, his power permeated every corner of society; it will take months, even years, to restore Hungary to the status of a “normal” democracy, to dismantle the “mafia state” that Orbán created, to see the press revived, universities reopened, and the judiciary return to administering the law equally for all. To eradicate corruption. But what matters is that it is possible to do so. 

And much of the credit goes to the European Union, to the rules governing its functioning, and to the people who still believe in the value of democracy and the need to protect it at all times. Orbán has been working on his “illiberal democracy” for years, but he had to do so while remaining in the Union, because it suited him, if nothing else, for the flow of money he received and the influence it afforded him in international politics. He did not leave, but the Union, patiently, for years, continued to react to his misdeeds, perhaps mildly, but it did so; it used almost every opportunity to penalise the Hungarian government, blocking funds, meeting behind his back, forcing him into decisions he would rather not have taken, while in Parliament there were always very strong calls for drastic measures against a government that tended not to respect the most basic democratic rules. 

The fact is, Orbán remained in the EU believing he could challenge its underlying democratic principles to the very end, and he lost. He could not go beyond a certain limit, because there were those in Brussels ready to take the strictest measures to ensure he observed a minimum of democratic decency. And that opening remained, and six million Hungarians slipped through it yesterday to say ‘enough.’ And according to polls, they want to remain in the European Union while respecting its democratic principles.