The outgoing prime minister has vowed to focus on rebuilding the “nationalist movement” following his defeat in the general election.
Hungary’s outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said he will not take his seat in the new parliament after Fidesz lost the election and announced that he will focus on reorganizing the country’s parliament. “patriotic movement.”
Orban said in his video statement on Saturday that he won the parliamentary mandate as head of the Fidesz-KDNP list. “It is actually the responsibility of the Fidesz parliament,” and that he has decided so “Give it back.”
“Now I am not needed in parliament, but in the reconstruction of the patriotic movement,” He said.
The move comes less than two weeks after Orban’s main Fidesz party was crushed by Peter Magyar’s Tisza party, which won 141 of 199 seats in Hungary’s April 12 parliamentary election.
Orban said the parliamentary wing of Fidesz will be “completely changed” and that Gergely Gulyas would lead the new group when it was formed on Monday. He also said that the party will hold a national meeting next week and bring it before him “renewal conference” until June.
Despite withdrawing from the parliament, Orban made it clear that he intends to remain at the top of the party, saying that the leadership recommended that he continue to be the president of Fidesz and that he is ready to do so if the parliament restores confidence in him.
Orban gave a defiant tone instead of backing down, telling supporters that “This camp remains a united and cohesive Hungarian political community.”
The election loss marked the biggest turning point of Orban’s career and is expected to reshape Hungary’s relations with the EU and the US, as well as Russia and Ukraine.
Orban had blocked Ukraine’s bailout in retaliation for the suspension of oil supplies through the Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline in January. He called the approach politically motivated aimed at supporting the Magyar party.
Just a few weeks after the election, Kiev resumed the flow of Russian oil through an allegedly damaged pipeline. Budapest quickly overrode its veto, and the EU officially approved €90 billion ($105 billion) in emergency funding for Ukraine for 2026-27 and passed its 20th package of sanctions on Russia earlier this week.
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