In 2022, he was still applauding a speech by Viktor Orbán, sitting in the front row with Judit Varga, then his wife and Minister of Justice. However, he already did not have his tongue in his pocket, not depriving himself of attacking the Orban galaxy with his claws. “They called me “the eternal opposition” within Fidesz,” the ruling party, he boasted in 2024, shortly after his burst onto the political scene.
“C’est Viktor Orbán il ya vingt ans”
His status as an “old initiate” contributed to his meteoric rise, believes Andrzej Sadecki, analyst at the Center for Eastern Studies (OSW) in Warsaw. “He seems more convincing in the eyes of some former Fidesz voters when he says that the system is rotten from the inside,” adds the expert, estimating that “in a certain way, Peter Magyar is Viktor Orbán twenty years ago, without all the baggage, the corruption and the mistakes made in power.” Born on March 16, 1981 into a family of influential conservatives, Peter Magyar was interested in politics from an early age. During his university years, where he studied law, he became friends with Gergely Gulyas, the current chief of staff of Viktor Orbán, and met his future wife, with whom he had three children.
After working as a lawyer, he became a stay-at-home father in Brussels when Judit Varga was hired in 2009 as an assistant to a Fidesz MEP. When Viktor Orbán returned to power in 2010, he was appointed diplomat in charge of European affairs. The family returned to Hungary in 2018, when Judit Varga was appointed secretary of state, then minister of Justice. Peter Magyar, for his part, took the helm of the student loan organization Diakhitel Kozpont and sat on the board of directors of several other public companies.
Unknown to the general public before the start of 2024, when he denounced the Orban system in broad daylight, in the wake of a resounding scandal involving a pardon granted in a child crime case, he then claimed to have no political ambition. A few weeks later, he held his first rally, attracting tens of thousands of people. Peter Magyar was quickly perceived as “brave, in action and ready to take personal risks”, says Veronika Kovesdi, media specialist at ELTE University in Budapest.
Loyal EU member
Her communication on social networks had a great “emotional” echo, according to her, and contributed to the emergence of a strong community of support. He quickly took the reins of a hitherto dormant party, Tisza, which came in second place in the 2024 European elections, behind the ruling coalition. As his popularity grew, Peter Magyar found himself confronted with a series of accusations, including that of domestic violence from Judit Varga, from whom he divorced in 2023, a “tsunami of hatred and lies” according to him.
For Veronika Kovesdi, this may have contributed to “legitimizing it further”. On the program side, Peter Magyar proposes improving public services such as health and education, in a lamentable state, and fighting against corruption which “is everywhere”. He also outlined a pro-Western foreign policy, saying he would work to make Hungary a reliable NATO ally and a loyal EU member. Like Viktor Orbán, he refuses to send weapons to Ukraine and is opposed to rapid integration of the country into the EU, even if he does not share his hostile rhetoric towards kyiv.
