The Times They Are A-Changin’: Europe is Realising That Right is Wrong 

“I can see the end, of what I’ve become
A tale of a love, come and gone” 

The obvious story is the ending Viktor Orbán’s 16-year reign in Hungary, and how it will reshape their relationship with the EU. 

Peter Magyar’s Tisza party is projected to have won a super-majority, which would allow them to amend the constitution and key laws, and enable them to reverse some of the changes made by Orbán and Fidesz, potentially unlocking EU funds. 

Magyar’s success came despite Fidesz’s transformation of Hungary’s electoral system and gerrymandering of its 106 voting districts, which meant that Tisza needed to gain an estimated 5% more votes than Orbán’s party to achieve even a simple majority. 

Orbán had been seen as a leader of the far-right globally, endorsed by contemporaries such as France’s Marine Le Pen to Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Whilst Orban’s relationship with the EU was far from good, it had deteriorated recently after he vetoed further EU sanctions on Russia, and an additional €90bn loan for Ukraine.  

Tensions between Budapest and Brussels reached a low-point in October 2025 after allegations that his government had shared confidential EU information with Moscow in a phone call with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Orbán promised to be a “mouse” aiding the “lion” Putin, telling Putin: “In any matter where I can be of assistance, I am at your service.”  

In Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the country was ready to advance cooperation with Hungary, however Magyar seems set to continue opposing plans to sending arms to the country and fast-tracking their EU membership.  

The bigger picture, is how this defeat undermines Trump’s 2025 US National Security Strategy (“NSS”), which intended to ensure that Europe’s right-wing parties came to, or retained power, with the intent or undermining and ultimately destroying the EU. 

The Hungarian election was the first national test of the NSS, and of the resilience of the Maga movement and the global far right. 

Orbán was once described by Donald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon as “Trump before Trump”. 

“Trump before Trump”

The US did what it could to interfere with the election, with VP Vance travelling to Budapest to “help”. Donald Trump, who had also repeatedly endorsed Orbán, vowed on Friday to bring US “economic might” to the country if Orbán was re-elected. 

Their support highlighted Orbán’s status as the forerunner of Maga-style Christian nationalism and US appreciation of Hungary’s role as a Eurosceptic hindrance to Brussels. Along with the NSS and it European strategy, there was also Orbán’s help for the Kremlin as it attempts to undermine European support for Ukraine. Orbán’s Fidesz party had demonised Zelenskyy, portraying Ukraine as a threat to Hungary’s national interests.  

In the US, Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, the US House of Representatives minority leader, said the results of the Hungarian election did not bode well for the Trump administration. “Far-right authoritarian Viktor Orbán has lost the election. Trump sycophants and Maga extremists in Congress are up next in November. Winter is coming.” 

It isn’t only in Hungary that voters are pushing-back against the hard-right.  

In the recent French local election, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN”) failed to make the symbolic breakthrough in major cities, while centre-left parties performed well enough to offer renewed hope for the post-Macron era.  

In Paris, the new left-wing mayor, Emmanuel Grégoire Grégoire beat the right-wing former minister Rachida Dati who had wanted to take the French capital after 25 years of it being run by the left.  

‘It isn’t only in Hungary that voters are pushing-back against the hard-right’

The RN also failed to win Marseille, France’s second-largest city, but significantly increased its local councillors and won smaller towns including Carcassonne. The RN’s close ally, Éric Ciotti, who will play an important role in the far-right’s presidential election campaign, is now mayor of France’s fifth-biggest city, Nice. 

The mayoral elections in large towns and cities across France, were seen as a test of the political temperature ahead the 2027 presidential election when Emmanuel Macron’s two terms in office will end, and Marine Le Pen’s far-right, anti-immigration RN is expected to make the presidential final round. 

The RN has strong support in disillusioned provincial France, and across the south, leaving the country divided and fractious.  

The end of Macronism offers opportunities to both the centre-left and centre-right. In the country’s three biggest cities, the Socialists and Greens hold sway, while Les Républicains are reviving in more prosperous towns. Meanwhile, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s radical left France Unbowed party continues to dominate in the banlieues and do well among the university-educated young. 

Keeping the RN out of the Élysée palace will depend on Les Républicains holding on to voters tempted by the far-rights promises, and the capacity of the left to unite around a candidate with a broad appeal encompassing the post-Macron centre ground. 

There is also the rise of politicians of colour, such as Bally Bagayoko who led a left-wing list uniting the radical left party, La France Insoumise (LFI), and the Communist party who won Saint Denis, the second biggest city in the Paris (Île-de-France) region in the first of two rounds. 

‘On the right-wing news channel CNews, he was compared by a guest to a “primitive tribal chief” and to a monkey’

Saint Denis, on the outskirts of Paris, is in the poorest department in all of metropolitan France, marked by unemployment, low incomes and social disadvantage. 

His victory was not dissimilar to that of Zohran Mamdani in the recent New York mayoral election. 

His was not alone success, 13 mayors of colour out of 39 were elected under various political labels. 

This emergence of a new generation of politicians comes at a time when, nationally, the far right controls more towns and cities than ever before, and there are clear indications that this change is not universally welcomed. 

‘With the Iran war showing no signs of winding down, countries will soon start to tip into recession’

One white journalist directly confronted Bagayoko with the suggestion that his campaign had received backing from drug dealers, and asked “whose hands” he was in. On the right-wing news channel CNews, he was compared by a guest to a “primitive tribal chief” and to a monkey. 

In Italy, which goes to the polls next year, PM Meloni is enduring the most difficult period of her premiership. After losing a referendum on proposals to change the country’s judicial system, the western leader closest to the White House is unlikely to succeed in pushing through other controversial constitutional changes.  

The referendum result is being viewed as a more general verdict on a government that has failed to improve living standards. 

These set-backs for Europe’s hard-right parties shows that being associated with Trump is an electoral handicap. With the Iran war showing no signs of winding down, countries will soon start to tip into recession, further damaging their credibility. 

“These silver apples will shine on I was wrong
The hottest love has the coldest end”