Viktor Orbán
Viktor Mihály Orbán[1] (Hungarian: [ˈviktor ˈorbaːn] ⓘ; born 31 May 1963) is a Hungarian lawyer and politician who has been Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010, previously holding the office from 1998 to 2002. He has led the Fidesz political party since 1993, with a break between 2000 and 2003.
The native form of this personal name is Orbán Viktor Mihály. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.
Viktor Orbán
- László Sólyom
- Pál Schmitt
- László Kövér (acting)
- János Áder
- Katalin Novák
- László Kövér (acting)
- Tamás Sulyok
Office established
Fidesz (since 1988)
5, including Gáspár
- Erzsébet Sípos
- Győző Bálint Orbán
Carmelite Monastery of Buda
5. Cinege út, Budapest
- Politician
- lawyer
Orbán studied law at Eötvös Loránd University before entering politics in the wake of the Revolutions of 1989. Orbán already headed the Hungarian dissident student movement and became nationally known after a 1989 speech in which he openly demanded that Soviet armed forces leave the People's Republic of Hungary. After the end of communism in Hungary in 1989 followed by transition to a multiparty democracy the following year, Orbán was elected to the National Assembly and led Fidesz's parliamentary caucus until 1993.
During Orbán's first term as prime minister, from 1998 to 2002 with him as the head of a conservative coalition government, inflation and the fiscal deficit shrank and Hungary joined NATO. Orbán was the Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2010. In 2010, Orbán was again elected prime minister. Central issues during Orbán's second premiership include controversial constitutional and legislative reforms, in particular the 2013 amendments to the Constitution of Hungary, as well as the European migrant crisis, the lex CEU, and the COVID-19 pandemic in Hungary. He was reelected in 2014, 2018, and 2022. On 29 November 2020, he became the country's longest-serving prime minister.[2]
Starting with the Second Orbán Government in 2010, during his uninterrupted stay in power, Orbán has curtailed press freedom, weakened judicial independence, and undermined multiparty democracy, amounting to democratic backsliding during Orbán's tenure.[3][4][5] He frequently styles himself as a defender of Christian values in the face of the European Union, which he claims is anti-nationalist and anti-Christian. His portrayal of the E.U. as a political foe while accepting its money and funneling it to his allies and relatives has led to accusations that his government represents a kleptocracy.[6] It has also been characterized as a hybrid regime, dominant-party system, and mafia state.[7][8][9][10][11]
Orbán defends his policies as "illiberal Christian democracy".[12][13] As a result, Fidesz was suspended from the European People's Party from March 2019;[14] in March 2021, Fidesz left the EPP over a dispute over new rule-of-law language in the latter's bylaws.[15] In a July 2022 speech, Orbán criticized the miscegenation of European and non-European races, saying: "We [Hungarians] are not a mixed race and we do not want to become a mixed race."[16][17] Two days later in Vienna, he clarified that he was talking about cultures and not about race.[18] His tenure has seen Hungary's government shift towards what he has called "illiberal democracy", while simultaneously promoting Euroscepticism and opposition to liberal democracy and establishment of closer ties with China and Russia.[19][20][21]
Early life
Orbán was born on 31 May 1963 in Székesfehérvár into a rural middle-class family as the eldest son of the agronomist, mechanical engineer and later construction businessman Győző Orbán (born 1940)[22] and the special educator and speech therapist, Erzsébet Sípos (born 1944).[23] He has two younger brothers, both businessmen, Győző Jr. (born 1965) and Áron (born 1977). His paternal grandfather, Mihály Orbán, a former dockworker and a war veteran, farmed and worked as a veterinary assistant in Alcsútdoboz in Fejér County, where Orbán first grew up. The family moved in 1973 to the neighbouring Felcsút, where Orbán's father was head of the machinery department at the local farm collective.[24] Orbán attended school there and in Vértesacsa.[25][26] His parents and his grandfather completed further education as adults and pursued their careers within the framework of economic liberalisation under the Kádár regime.[27] In 1977, the family moved to Székesfehérvár, where Orbán had secured a place at the prestigious Blanka Teleki grammar school.[28] In his first two years at the school, he served as local secretary of the Hungarian Young Communist League (KISZ), membership of which was mandatory in order to matriculate to a university,[29][30] and of which his father was a patron.[31]
During his high school years, Orbán developed an interest in football, and befriended his future political associate Lajos Simicska.[28] After graduating in 1981, he completed his military service alongside Simicska. He was jailed several times for indiscipline, which included a failure to appear for duty during the 1982 FIFA World Cup and striking a non-commissioned officer during a personal altercation.[32] His time in the army also coincided with the declaration of martial law in Poland in December 1981, which his friend Simicska criticised;[32] Orbán recalled expecting to be mobilised to invade Poland.[33] He would later state that military service had shifted his political views radically from the previous position of a "naive and devoted supporter" of the Communist regime.[30] However, a state security report from May 1982, when his father was working on an engineering contract in Libya, still described him as "loyal to our social system".[31][34]
Next, in 1983, Orbán went to study law at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. He joined an English-model residential college for law students from outside the capital, Jogász Társadalomtudományi Szakkollégium (Lawyers' Special College of Social Sciences), established in 1983 by the young lecturer István Stumpf under the protection of the latter's father-in-law, the minister of the interior István Horváth.[35][36] Members of this college, which would be named after István Bibó in May 1989,[36] were permitted to explore social sciences beyond the socialist canon and the "new" field of "bourgeois" political science in particular.[37][38][39] It was there that Orbán met Gábor Fodor and László Kövér.[37][40] He became chairman of the executive committee of the college's sixty students in 1984.[40] He went on a series of trips to Poland with his classmates and lecturer Tamás Fellegi in 1984–1985 and again in 1987, during the third pastoral visit of John Paul II. Their Polish contacts all along were Małgorzata Tarasiewicz and Adam Jagusiak, members-to-be of the anti-Communist student movement Freedom and Peace from 1985.[41] Orbán submitted his Master's thesis on the Polish Solidarity movement, based on interviews with its leaders, in 1986.[33][42] In August 1986, shortly before Orbán's wedding with Dr Anikó Lévai in Szolnok in September of that year, a police source reported him to belong to an organisation whose members were lecturing in the USA or West Germany as "the country's expected future leaders" and receiving Western support, while also being privy to top-level government decisions through minister Horváth and enjoying full protection of the Budapest police (BRFK). The minister was expected to personally intervene to clear Orbán in particular of any sedition charges.[31][34] After obtaining the higher degree of Juris Doctor[43] in 1987,[44][45] Orbán lived in Szolnok for two years, commuting to his job in Budapest as a sociologist at the Management Training Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food.[46] In November 1987, Orbán welcomed a group of 150 delegates from 17 countries to a two-day seminar on the Perestroika, conscientious objection and the prospects for a pan-European democratic movement, held at the Lawyers' Special College of Social Sciences with the backing of the European Network for East–West Dialogue.[39]
In September 1989, Orbán took up a research fellowship at Pembroke College, Oxford, funded by the Soros Foundation which had employed him part-time since April 1988.[47] He began work on the concept of civil society in European political thought under the guidance of Zbigniew Pełczyński.[26][48] During this time, he unsuccessfully contested the Fidesz leadership elections in Budapest, which he lost to Fodor. In January 1990, he abandoned his project at Oxford and returned to Hungary with his family to run for a seat in Hungary's first post-communist parliament.[49]