site.btaHungarians Treat European Elections as National Ones - Political Scientist

“Hungarian [voter] turnout has broken every record. A lot of people turned out to vote, because they treated this is a national election, not a European election, because of the turmoil that has been happening in Hungary the last couple of months, after a scandal has shaken trust in the current governing party and has upended opposition dynamics,” Gergely Rajnai, a lecturer and researcher at the Faculty of Political Science at Corvinus University in Budapest, told BTA in an interview. 

He said that overall, the ruling Fidesz party in Hungary has performed as it usually does and got around 44-45% of the votes, which will give it about the same number of MEPs as it won in the previous European election. 

The big change in these elections are the opposition parties, which have basically been replaced by a newly formed party, which got almost 30% of the votes, which give it seven seats in the EP. “Since 2006, no party other than Fidesz has been able to achieve this many votes in Hungarian elections. So this is a pretty strong showing, especially for a party that is only two months old, and all the other parties were below 10%. And that shows that there is a clear two-party race now in Hungarian politics,” he said. 

Asked to comment whether the EP election results will influence the work of the upcoming Hungarian EU Presidency next month, Rajnai said that his country’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban is sceptical of the current European leadership, and the current European leadership has been dealt a blow. “Not in Hungary necessarily, but in European terms, but not a huge blow as far as I understand it, because the major parties, the mainstream parties, still have a majority in the new European Parliament, probably we will see how it will pan out. But I think, as far as the Hungarian presidency goes, I don't think the priorities will change much. The Hungarian presidency was much more pro-European than the rhetoric of Viktor Orban, at least in preparation. The Hungarian presidency wants to achieve common European goals such as security and even some of the green goals, which is normally not on the government's agenda. So, they are basically treating these as two separate things. There is domestic rhetoric, for campaigns. And then there is dealing with Brussels in practice, which involves the presidency,” he said, adding that he does not expect there to be any problems with the Hungarian EU presidency.