European elections 2024: Huge changes on the Hungarian political map, this is how the parties commented

Undoubtedly, the 2024 EP and municipal elections brought a huge reshuffle on the Hungarian political map. Some parties have so far looked strong but have barely received any votes, and on the opposition side, there is only one clear winner from yesterday’s election, Péter Magyar and the Tisza Party.

Magyar: Tisza party shows that politics ‘can be beautiful, just and honest’

Péter Magyar, deputy leader and EP list-leading candidate of the Respect and Freedom (Tisza) party, said the Tisza party would prove to the Hungarian people that politics “can be beautiful, just and honest”.

“Today marks the end of an era and the start of the future,” Magyar told Tisza party supporters as the election results were announced in the early hours of Monday. “The greatest result is that this is the beginning of the end for the [Fidesz] Alliance of Young Democrats and the System of National Cooperation.”

“Despite the billions burned on propaganda, the war psychosis, the hate propaganda, the Hungarian people have seen through the charade,” he said. “Fidesz has never achieved such a weak result in the EP elections.”

“There’s no turning back; this is the slope that [former Socialist PM] Ferenc Gyurcsány also started on, and it’s easy to pick up speed up on it.”

He said Fidesz had lost the public’s trust, and had a chance to decide to call early elections in Hungary in the coming months. He insisted that one reason to call early elections was because it was uncertain whether the government could “survive the austerity that will be coming because of the state of the budget”.

He said it was up to ruling Fidesz to decide “whether they will use the next two years to continue robbing their country”.

In response to a question, he said he had not yet decided whether he would take up his mandate in the Budapest municipal assembly or the European Parliament. He noted that he had said in the past that he would not become an MEP, adding, however, that the party would be the one to decide.

Magyar said Tisza would be joining the European People’s Party in the European Parliament. He said he had discussed this with Manfred Weber, the EPP’s leader, on the phone last week, and they had agreed that Tisza will send its official application after the results came in. Tisza could join the EPP group as early as next week, he said.

Dobrev laments ‘disappointing result’

Klára Dobrev, the list-leading MEP candidate of the opposition Democratic Coalition (DK), Socialist and Dialogue-Greens parties, called the outcome of Hungary’s European parliamentary and local elections “disappointing”, at a ballot-watch early on Monday.

Dobrev said they had thought that their policies would “convince more people”.

She said three of the four parties that would be representing Hungary in the EP were right wing and they “envision a very different Europe to the one we do”. She said they still believed that a strong Europe could guarantee prosperity to Hungarians in their everyday lives.