Who is Péter Magyar Hungary’s new leader?
Péter Magyar was elected prime minister of Hungary after his dramatic victory over long-time leader Viktor Orbán.
The Tisza party, a centre-right, pro-European party led by Mr. Maygar, won elections in Hungary this evening, besting Mr. Orbán and the Fidesz party, which has a 16-year mandate and has won four consecutive elections.
Towards election night, Magyar tried to distance himself from Orbán’s rural support base by making non-stop tours of the countryside for months.
Who is Peter Magyar?
Péter Magyar, 45, comes from a political family with deep political connections, including his great-uncle Ferenc Mádl, a lawyer-turned-politician and former president of Hungary.
He attended an elite Catholic boys’ high school near the center of Budapest, then studied law at a Catholic university in the capital.
He married former Fidesz party justice minister Judit Varga in 2006 and the couple have three sons. The couple divorced in March 2023.
His rise to fame
Mr Maygar first joined the Fidesz party while he was still at university. He also eventually became closely linked to the party’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás.
He met his wife, Judit Varga, who was the rising star of the Fidesz party at the time, in 2005 and married her in 2006.
Ms. Varga eventually became justice minister in 2019.
But in 2024, he left the party after a scandal emerged involving his wife, when the Fidesz government pardoned a man who helped cover up the crimes of a notorious pedophile.
Maygar released a secret recording of his wife allegedly caught describing the government’s involvement in the case.
Magyar joined the little-known Tizsa party to contest European Parliament elections in 2024, winning 29 percent of the vote last June. Under his leadership, the party said “It’s now or never!” adopted the slogan.
Magyar political stances
He is widely seen as an “insider” who had become an opponent of the Fidesz party, and he addressed this narrative, telling the BBC in 2024: “After a while, I became increasingly critical, open and fair among my friends. I can tell you that the Fidesz we see today is very, very different from the one when I joined in 2002.”
“Politicians always told me that it was necessary to maintain power, and I accepted that for a while. But of course the turning point was 2024.”
The Magyar motto “It’s now or never” dates back to the cry of a revolutionary poet in the 19th century to stand up for the homeland.
He promised to fight corruption, improve the economy and tried to gain support from Hungary’s disadvantaged Roma community.
The Tizsa leader also pledged to unlock billions of euros in EU funds.
