Many believe Viktor Orbán breathed a sigh of relief after his election defeat, first travelling to the United States for the final matches of the football World Cup, then to Serbia for a festival, and more recently being spotted in Croatia in decidedly illustrious company. Is he truly merely on holiday, or is the former prime minister engaged in vigorous negotiations?
Political, water and energy crisis, yet Orbán is not at home
According to Viktor Orbán, by the Tisza majority accepting the removal of President Tamás Sulyok – elected by Fidesz – via the 17th constitutional amendment, they have driven yet another nail into the coffin of Hungarian democracy. He chose to voice this on his Facebook page while everyone knew he was in the United States, attending the World Cup semi-final and final in person, albeit not from a VIP box.Since then, investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi has suggested he might secure a vice-presidential role at FIFA, while also reporting that Donald Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei could be engineering a deputy UN secretary-general post for his erstwhile ally. Bertalan Havasi, Fidesz spokesman, dismissed all such speculation as press fabrication. Further background and possible consequences can be read in our earlier coverage.
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Yet Orbán’s former allies have not forgotten him
While Hungary grappled with a water and energy crisis brought on by unprecedented drought and low water levels, the former prime minister was not at home but in Serbia, at a brass-band festival. He was not alone: he was accompanied by Oszkár Világi, the Slovak-Hungarian billionaire, former head of Slovnaft (owned by MOL) and MOL deputy chief executive, as well as Dániel Taraczky, the architect behind the Orbán family’s Hatvanpuszta estate. According to hvg.hu, Világi, in his capacity as MOL deputy chief, may even have been smoothing the way for the acquisition of NIS, the Serbian energy company sanctioned for its ties to Putin, while in the Balkan state.
Not the first holiday with Mária Schmidt
The former premier was recently spotted in Croatia, near Opatija (Abbázia), walking with his former propaganda minister, Antal Rogán, and Mária Schmidt, director-general of the House of Terror Museum. This is not the first time he has stayed at the holiday villa owned by a company belonging to Anna Ungár: in 2023 we reported that he holidayed there even as Anna Ungár’s brother, Péter Ungár, then co-chair of the opposition LMP, was criticising the Orbán system.The photograph sent to 444.hu by a reader does not reveal what Orbán was doing at the villa, but a later image taken in a restaurant shows him again with the same party, indicating this was no one-off occasion.
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After the election defeat, he sought to topple Orbán
Mária Schmidt was, in fact, one of the leaders of Viktor Orbán’s internal opposition following his second election defeat in 2006, arguing that the ousted prime minister should hand over the leadership of Fidesz, as elections could not be won with him at the helm. The plot was exposed in January 2007; Schmidt’s position weakened, but Orbán ultimately forgave her in a highly visible manner, and the officially trained historian became one of the Orbán system’s most ardent defenders.Schmidt, a historian by training, arrived in Fiume (Rijeka) on a private jet belonging to one of Anna Ungár’s companies, not far from the villa in Opatija (Abbázia). However, according to a source close to the scene contacted by Blikk, Orbán and Rogán travelled to the location by car, not by plane or helicopter.
