Peter Magyar takes power in Hungary on Saturday. He knows he doesn't have much time to perform and he's already taken a wrong step
Peter Magyar arrived at the Hungarian Parliament on Saturday morning to be sworn in as prime minister, a little less than a month after his landslide victory in parliamentary elections against nationalist Viktor Orban, according to AFP.
Hungarian President Tamas Sulyok opened the meeting by welcoming MPs elected following the April 12 parliamentary election, who are due to vote later in the afternoon to appoint the pro-European conservative as head of government.
Outside, hundreds of people gathered under the sun to watch the ceremony broadcast on huge screens installed around the Parliament on the banks of the Danube.
High expectations of Hungarians
“I have never known this joy, this friendly atmosphere; you can see that most people wanted this,” the change, Anna Horvath, a 66-year-old pensioner who says she hopes for an end to corruption, the return of freedoms and her country's return to the European Union, told France Presse.
After the euphoria of success, expectations are indeed high for the one who promised “regime change” to end the corruption and freedom violations that have marked Orban's 16 years in power.
Hungary is also facing numerous economic problems, starting with the stagnation of the economy and the degradation of public services, which require structural reforms that will take a long time.
For now, Hungarians are showing “a lot of patience and a lot of goodwill,” Andrea Virag, director of strategy at the liberal think tank Republikon, points out. “But the expectations are enormous and must be met in the short term,” she added.
Peter Magyar, 45, is set to address the crowd after his inauguration.
Peter Magyar knows he doesn't have much time to perform
Aware that the grace period may not last, he is quick to promote the adoption of reforms to “recover” European funds frozen due to past violations of the rule of law. All the more so as Hungary faces a deadline in August, when it could lose 10 billion euros from the post-Covid recovery plan.
Last week, Peter Magyar traveled to Brussels, where he held informal meetings with EU leaders, hoping to get by the end of May the release of these funds, which he is counting on to fulfill his campaign promises.
Although it welcomes with open arms this newcomer to politics, who has promised to restore peaceful relations with the EU, Brussels may still wait for the adoption of concrete reforms before meeting his expectations.
Peter Magyar has already pledged to join the European Public Prosecutor's Office, fight corruption and ensure the independence of the judiciary and the media.
He has already taken a wrong first step
To do so, he has wide leeway thanks to the qualified majority he enjoys in Parliament, where his party, Tisza, won 141 out of 199 seats.
He also threatened to amend the Basic Law to get the president, a close Orban ally, out if he refused to step down, and to fire “all the puppets appointed by the Orban system to key positions,” including the prosecutor general or the president of the Constitutional Court.
While analysts expect Peter Magyar to face difficulties due to the limited political experience of his largely technocratic team, he made a first misstep by trying to appoint lawyer Marton Mellethei-Barna, his future brother-in-law, as justice minister, causing some resentment in a country marked by years of nepotism.
The latter announced on Thursday that he was resigning so that “not even the smallest shadow falls on the transition to democracy”.
