This blog post has been contributed by Dr Oana Stefan, Module Convenor for EU law.
On the 12th of April 2026, Hungarian voters delivered a historic upset, ending Viktor Orbán’s 16‑year rule as prime minister: the centre‑right, pro‑EU Tisza party, led by Péter Magyar, won a landslide victory with enough seats for a two‑thirds constitutional majority in the 199‑member parliament. Orbán’s Fidesz party suffered a decisive defeat and the turnout was exceptionally high, reflecting the election’s stakes. The French newspaper Le Monde covered the story under the title Hungary celebrates ‘return to Europe’ after Orban’s crushing electoral defeat. This blog will look through what this ‘return to Europe’ could mean, in the light of what we are studying in the framework of the EU module, especially under Topics 3, 5, and 12.
Hungary has experienced systemic rule of law backsliding since around 2010, which has been linked in the academic literature and traced historically to the Orbán regime. This backsliding is marked by the politicisation of the judiciary, weakening of anti‑corruption safeguards, constraints on media pluralism, and pressure on civil society. These have led to a trigger of Article 7 TEU procedure by the European Parliament in 2018. As you will recall from the reflective activity under Topic 5, Article 7 TEU procedure offers potential remedies to violations of EU values by the Member States, which includes a preventive arm and a sanctioning arm. What happened in relation to Hungary is that the Parliament did not impose any sanctions, but opened the preventive stage under Article 7(1), initiating Council hearings with Hungary. Since 2018, multiple hearings have been held in the General Affairs Council, but no Council determination under Article 7(1) and no escalation to sanctions under Article 7(2)–(3) (such as suspension of voting rights) has occurred; the procedure therefore remains ongoing without penalties.
If triggering Article 7 was not particularly effective to redress the rule of law in Hungary, the suspension of funds under the Conditionality Regulation might have been one of the reasons for the 12th of April change in regime. As you will recall from Topic 12, the EU has passed legislation to deal with the rule of law backsliding, namely the Conditionality Regulation 2020/2092. This Regulation empowers the Commission to take a number of budgetary measures such as a suspension of payments in a situation where ‘breaches of the principles of the rule of law in a Member State affect or seriously risk affecting the sound financial management of the Union budget or the protection of the financial interests of the Union in a sufficiently direct way’. In relation to Hungary, the European Commission concluded in 2022 that systemic deficiencies, particularly in public procurement, anti‑corruption safeguards, judicial independence and the protection of EU financial interests, posed a serious risk to the EU budget. This led Brussels to suspend large parts of Hungary’s cohesion and recovery funding; despite partial judicial reforms that allowed the release of €10.2 billion in late 2023, the Commission has maintained the freeze on roughly €18 billion (about €8.4 billion in cohesion funds and €9.5 billion under the Recovery and Resilience Facility), citing Hungary’s failure to meet key “super‑milestones” and rule‑of‑law benchmarks. In January 2025 Hungary permanently lost over €1 billion when suspended commitments expired – marking the first irreversible funding loss under the conditionality mechanism. The question that remains now, after the elections, is how will the EU respond to the change in regime in Hungary, with authors arguing that a sudden release of frozen funds will certainly jeopardise the credibility of rule of law enforcement through the conditionality regulation.
The Court has also been very active in defending the rule of law in Hungary. For instance, in Case C‑78/18 the Grand Chamber held that Hungary’s 2017 law imposing registration, labelling, and disclosure obligations on NGOs receiving foreign funding violated the free movement of capital and fundamental rights under the Charter, including freedom of association, respect for private life, and data protection. In Case C‑66/18, the Grand Chamber ruled that Hungary’s targeted amendments to its higher‑education law, designed to force the Central European University (CEU) out of the country, breached academic freedom, freedom to provide services, freedom of establishment, and Charter rights, as well as EU commitments under the GATS. Both judgments were decided as a result of linking violations to the internal market to EU values and the Charter. These cases are great examples of how the Charter rights can be triggered in cases involving the four freedoms. They are paradigmatic rule of law cases condemning the instrumental use of the law to eliminate freedom of association, freedom of speech, and access to a pluralistic education. A case tackling directly a violation of values and the charter is the pending Case C-769/22, concerning the Child Protection Law. This Hungarian Statute contains a generalised exclusion of LGBTI‑related content from spaces accessible to minors, irrespective of whether it is informational, educational, or depicts “ordinary lives.” In her opinion, Advocate General Ćapeta concluded that this law violated the internal market and multiple Charter rights, but also constituted a self‑standing infringement of Article 2 TEU (EU values). This is unprecedented: for the first time, an Advocate General has argued that the Court should find a direct breach of Article 2 TEU outside the Article 7 procedure, potentially providing a judicial gateway to address systemic rule of law violations and reinforcing the legal logic underpinning the conditionality regulation. It remains to be seen whether under the new regime Hungary will alter many of the laws which have been at the heart of the erosion of fundamental EU values in the country.
A final interaction between the illiberal Orbán regime and EU law brings forward the difficulties of the distribution of powers in the EU, with certain areas still left to unanimous decision making. In recent years, Hungary has repeatedly used its veto or threat of veto in the European Council (EUCO) to oppose collective EU action, most notably by blocking or delaying major financial assistance packages for Ukraine, resisting stronger sanctions against Russia, and stalling progress on Ukraine’s EU accession talks. Under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Budapest has justified this obstruction by invoking national interests, energy security, and electoral mandates, but the result has been persistent EUCO conclusions on Ukraine being endorsed by 26 rather than all 27 Member States, highlighting Hungary’s role as a structural spoiler in areas requiring unanimity.
This blog has highlighted some of the legal and political issues raised by Hungary’s illiberal regime during the past 16 years. The change brought by the elections of 12th of April has been welcomed by many, yet, it remains to be seen how the new legislature will redress the erosion of the rule of law and reconstruct their approach and vision as a EU Member State.