A Polish Warning for Post-Orbán Hungary: ‘We’ve Been Here Before.’

It was green, or perhaps aquamarine; I can’t quite remember now. A Hungarian sleeping mat for camping, made of synthetic material. Back in the 1980s, when I took it on trips to Poland’s Tatra mountains, it felt like it had come from another world. 

In the Polish People’s Republic, a country that no longer exists, but in which I grew up, “things from Hungary” seemed different and better. At a time when Polish communism was rotting and falling apart, Budapest was our Paris, a little portal through which real chewing gum found its way into our greyish world. Hungary was part of the Soviet bloc, just like we were. But we envied them.

Our friendship with the Hungarians — strong then, and no less strong today — is perhaps a legacy of the defunct Austro-Hungarian monarchy, that strange 19th-century empire of which we were both a part. Or perhaps it’s our common Central European melancholy.  

But while 40 years ago we looked up to the Hungarians, today what we have for them is a valuable, hard-won lesson — and a warning. As a Polish journalist, I avidly followed last weekend’s events, when Hungary’s quasi-authoritarian government, in power for 16 years, was voted out. But I also can’t forget that we in Poland went through the same thing just a few years ago. The next steps our friends take won’t be easy.

I was no longer a teenage camper when I first found myself in Budapest in early 2011. It wasn’t quite Paris anymore, but it still held on to its faded charm. Just as I arrived, a new era was beginning. Something strange was in the air. A few months earlier, my Hungarian colleague, Attila Mong, was sacked from the public broadcaster Radio Kossuth because he had marked a repressive new media law with a minute of on-air silence. That was the start of the Fidesz party’s rule.

After his 2010 election, the first thing Viktor Orbán set about tackling was the media, reorganizing it in the style of Vladimir Putin. Fear of censorship and dismissal began to spread among ordinary journalists. Fidesz’s onetime treasurer turned pro-Orbán oligarch, Lajos Simicska, was given the task of raising funds to build a new media ecosystem. 

Funded by pro-Orbán business interests, and supported by state advertising money, this “new media” sowed moral panic, stoked a fear of refugees, and demonized the “evil” European Union. Small investigative journalism organizations, like Atlatszo, Direkt36, Telex, or 444.hu, were the last bastions of free speech, operating under constant government fire. 

Next came the judicial system. Fidesz swiftly curtailed the powers of Hungary’s Constitutional Court, replacing the old judges with its own political appointees. It changed the system of judicial oversight. It amended the constitution, then wrote a new one. Over 16 years of Fidesz rule, Hungary went from a liberal democracy to what political scientists call a hybrid system with authoritarian features.

In 2015, the same story began in Poland. The Law and Justice Party (PiS), elected with the goal of leading a conservative revolution, copied the methods of its Hungarian counterpart, even promising Poles it would build a “Budapest in Warsaw.” It pacified the media. It distorted the judiciary. Its leaders were so besotted with the Hungarian prime minister that, just like him, they used Israeli Pegasus spyware to eavesdrop on their opponents. In short, PiS followed Orbán’s path — albeit in a milder, weaker way.

One bitter lesson we learned from the Hungarian example is that it’s quite possible for the government of an EU state to dismantle democratic institutions — and meet only token resistance from Brussels. Our Constitutional Tribunal, public prosecutor’s office, police, and secret services became the tools of a single party. The public media constantly broadcast pro-government propaganda, inciting hatred against refugees and LGBTQ+ people, and claimed this was the “will of the people.” 

Poland began to fall in freedom of speech rankings, and “things brought over from Hungary” took on a very different meaning. A total ban on abortion sparked hundred-thousand-strong protests in 2020 — and the authorities simply ignored them. I remember that moment, so heavy and stifling that it was hard to breathe. Like their Hungarian peers, many young people chose to leave their home for Berlin or other places in western, more liberal Europe.

But somehow, despite furious propaganda and all manner of political dirty tricks, the Poles managed to remove their Fidesz clone from power in 2023. PiS decisively lost the parliamentary election and retreated to the opposition. Now it was the Hungarians who began to look at the Poles with a touch of envy.

Now, Poland’s eight-year experience of democratic backsliding — and what has followed since — may serve as a useful precedent for our Hungarian friends. As we learned, PiS left a staggering amount of traps and landmines for its successors — and many have proved impossible to defuse. Fidesz, which ruled for twice as long, has laid similar traps and mines in Hungary.

Following its election victory, Poland’s new Civic Coalition government promised to quickly restore the rule of law and implement a range of social demands. In practice, some of these promises remain unfulfilled or are being implemented much more slowly than voters had expected. This applies, for example, to the liberalization of abortion laws — the current regulations remain among the most restrictive in Europe, and changes have become bogged down in political and procedural disputes.

Most fundamental is the issue of weakened institutions. The Polish courts, for example, were so thoroughly undermined that to this day no one knows what to do with them. Countless judges were appointed in breach of constitutional requirements, but the process of removing them from office is still ongoing. Attempts to restore balance are fraught with the risk of repeating previous practices.

Disputes over the legitimacy of judges have contributed to an embarrassing state of chaos in the Constitutional Tribunal, Poland’s highest court. For months, it has been mired in political conflict and decision-making paralysis.

Meanwhile, Poland’s public media are controlled by the National Broadcasting Council, a constitutionally independent body whose employees are appointed to lengthy terms and can’t be easily removed. It’s staffed and led almost entirely by PiS members. Guess which media outlets it prefers to reprimand and punish.

Despite these frustrations, our more liberal, democratic Poland could serve as an example for Péter Magyar’s new Hungarian government. If the attempt to build a “Budapest in Warsaw” failed, perhaps a “Warsaw in Budapest” could emerge? After all, with his decisive electoral victory, Magyar holds more cards in Hungary than Donald Tusk did when he came to power in Poland. Above all, Magyar has the constitutional majority crucial for implementing changes. But a long and bumpy road lies ahead.

Among his tasks will be to get Hungary out from under the EU’s Article 7 procedure — the bloc’s so-called nuclear option which allows for the suspension of a member state’s rights if it seriously threatens the rule of law and democratic norms. Separately, and even more urgently for Budapest, rule-of-law disputes have left roughly 17 billion euros in EU funds frozen — an amount that represents nearly 10 percent of Hungary’s annual GDP. Magyar has promised to adopt a package of anti-corruption laws, and above all to restore the independence of the judiciary. That should help.

In the case of Poland, Tusk’s new government, which also inherited frozen EU funds, managed to unblock them relatively quickly because the rule-of-law issues were concentrated mainly in the judiciary and it signalled a credible intention to resolve them (though it has only partially succeeded). 

Hungary’s situation is more complex. Getting the EU money back will require not only a renewed judicial independence, but also anti-corruption reforms, guarantees of academic freedom and LGBTQ+ rights, and disputes involving EU asylum law.

Magyar’s first step, namely his commitment to join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, is a wise and symbolically powerful move. It signals a break with Orbán’s system in the fight against corruption and should renew Brussels’ goodwill. But the full release of the frozen funds will require genuine legislative and institutional reforms on many fronts. Some additional gestures could unlock the first tranches within a few months. But meeting most of the conditions will take at least a year, as they require legislative changes.

Magyar’s party is not liberal “in the Brussels sense.” It voted alongside Fidesz on migration, has been cautious on supporting Ukraine, and opposed the EU’s 2024 migration-and-asylum overhaul. Magyar defeated Orbán because he promised Hungarians a continuation of center-right policies without Fidesz’s excesses: Without oligarchic networks encumbering the state, without pandering to Trump and Putin, and without unnecessary wars with Brussels, for which Hungary’s economy, deprived of EU funds, has paid the price.

If the Fidesz oligarchy can be dismantled and autonomy restored to universities and cultural institutions, Hungary will most likely return to the European mainstream, no longer playing the role of a Trojan horse for Donald Trump or Putin within the EU.

But what will become of the media, degraded and corrupted by the previous regime? Who will now be the “guardian of democracy”? Reporters Without Borders describes Hungary as a country with “media empire under the party’s command,” and has ranked the country 68th out of 180 in its press freedom index (down from 23rd place in 2010).

Magyar has announced that he will suspend news programs on state media until objective reporting can be ensured. He also promises to pass a new media law and establish a new media supervisory body. This is to be one of his cabinet’s first steps. He assures us that his future government will not interfere with journalists’ work.

My Hungarian friends — the fearless journalists I have come to know over the past two decades — will surely have many important and useful tips for their new prime minister. Let us hope he takes them on board, and that “things from Hungary” take on a new meaning once more.