Péter Magyar sworn in as Hungary’s prime minister ending 16-year Orbán era | Péter Magyar

Pro-European centre-right leader Péter Magyar has been sworn in as Hungary’s prime minister, marking the official end of Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule.

Saturday’s ceremony, at which Magyar invited people to “write Hungarian history” together and “step through the door of regime change”, came a month after the opposition Tisza party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections.

The result caused jubilation in Budapest and beyond; because Orbán and his populist, nationalist movement have long been held up as an example to be followed by the global far right.

Speaking to tens of thousands of supporters who heeded his call to gather outside parliament, the new prime minister said the road to change was very long and often quite bumpy.

But Hungarians can finally rejoice, he added. “Every freedom-loving person in the world today wants to be a little Hungarian,” he said.

“You taught the country and the world that it is the most ordinary, flesh-and-blood people who can defeat the most brutal tyranny,” Magyar added to thunderous applause.

He had previously told parliament that Hungarians had given his party the mandate to open a “new page” in the country’s history. “A mandate not just to change the government, but to change the system. To start over.”

Hungary under Orbán’s watch country with the most corruption in the EU. “Orbán’s associates and elites have a long way to go until they face what they have done,” he said, promising that his government would seek justice against those who tried to “steal everything” even in the final hours.

He reiterated his call for those appointed under Orbán to resign, asking them to do so by the end of the month. The first should be Tamás Sulyok, he said, referring to the president who nominated Magyar to form a government a few minutes ago. The crowd outside Parliament shouted their approval at this comment.

Magyar has vowed to build a more inclusive Hungary that will be freer, more humane and hopeful than it was under Orbán’s populist nationalist movement. “What unites us will be stronger than what divides us,” he said. “Hungary will be the home of every Hungarian, and everyone will be able to feel that they have a place in the Hungarian nation. Family, friends and communities will be able to talk to each other again.”

Early on Saturday, people began to flock to the square outside the country’s neo-Gothic parliament as the opening session was broadcast on big screens. The crowd cheered whenever they saw Magyar, while some MPs from Fidesz and the far-right Our Homeland party were booed.

Many of the crowd had traveled for hours to get there. “For the first time, I feel like being Hungarian is a good thing,” said Erzsébet Medve, 68, from Miskolc in northeastern Hungary. “I feel like I could cry.”

As a school teacher, she had long watched with disappointment as Orbán and the Fidesz government defunded the education system. “The government had enough money, but they didn’t spend it there.”

Sitting next to him, 70-year-old Marianna Szűcs said she hoped Hungary would become a more livable country. “We now think that our children and grandchildren have a future here,” he said.

As he spoke, the crowd behind him began to cheer wildly as the newly elected speaker of the parliament, Ágnes Forstoffer, announced that the EU flag, taken down by Fidesz in 2014, would be returned to the building.

Szűcs said his two children had to move abroad. He said they both lost their jobs, apparently after speaking out against the Fidesz government. “I’m retired, so they went after them,” he said. “We hope they can now return home.”

Tisza’s landslide victory, with 141 seats in the 199-seat parliament, was a stunning result for Magyar, who until recently was a little-known former member of Fidesz’s elite. He emerged into the public eye in early 2024 after turning on the party, exposing the inner workings of a system he described as rotten and accusing officials of increasing their power and wealth at the expense of ordinary Hungarians.

The new parliament marks the first time since the country’s democratization in 1990 that it will not feature Orbán, whose decades-long career has seen him transform from pro-democracy campaigner to Russia-friendly figure praised by the US Maga movement. Late last month, Orbán, 62, said he would instead focus on reorganizing his movement.

Magyar, 45, has vowed to use his majority to roll back the systems established by Orbán, who has filled the country’s judiciary, media and state with loyalists as he sought to turn Hungary into a “petri dish for liberalism”.

Beyond the country’s borders, Magyar has vowed to rebuild Hungary’s long-tense relationship with the EU and work with the bloc to release billions of dollars of frozen EU funds.

Hints of this change were symbolically included in plans for Saturday’s swearing-in: several anthems would be played in tribute to Hungary’s EU membership, its large Roma minority and ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries, while lawyer Vilmos Kátai-Németh was to become the country’s first blind minister in charge of social and family affairs.

After years of Orbán’s Hungary fall behind When it comes to women’s representation in parliament, more than a quarter of MPs in most of the EU will be women; this is a record figure in the country’s post-communist history.

Tisza’s new foreign minister, Anita Orbán, said it was no coincidence that Saturday’s swearing-in ceremony took place on Europe Day, which commemorates the proposal that gave birth to today’s EU. “The message is clear: Hungary’s place is in Europe. Naturally, definitively and without question,” Orbán, who has no relation to the former prime minister, said on social media.

This was an echo of Magyar’s actions in the weeks since the election, as he sought to highlight the end of what he described as Hungary’s “twenty-year nightmare”; Calling on those appointed under Orbán to resign, pledging to suspend broadcasts by state media that serve as Orbán’s mouthpiece; He met with EU officials twice and return Millions of Hungarian forints donated to him by an Orbán-linked supporter.

The task facing the Magyar and his government is enormous. Promises to fix the country’s crumbling public services will come face to face with the country’s stagnant economy and stubbornly high budget deficit. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen how many Orbán loyalists in the media, academia and the judiciary will react to the change.

Still, the mood in Budapest was celebratory on Saturday. Crowds lined up at the Tisza booth to buy party supplies, while others walked around waving Hungarian flags.

With left-of-center and liberal parties absent from parliament for the first time since 1990, Budapest’s liberal mayor was quick to invite Hungarians to come together to mark the end of Fidesz’s grip on power and salute those who have long opposed the system.

“Teachers were fired, civilians and journalists were humiliated, small churches were smashed,” Gergely Karácsony, who has long clashed with Orbán, wrote on social media. “We can finally put this period behind us – but first, let’s remember the ordinary heroes and say goodbye to the system and give thanks.”