In the autumn of 2023, Péter Magyar received unpleasant news. One of his old acquaintances outside the MOM Park shopping centre in Budapest told him that he was being excluded from an exclusive government club.

The association, called Stádium, was founded in 2010 by one of Péter Magyar’s closest friends, Gergely Gulyás, a current minister in Viktor Orbán’s government, together with people who had spoken out against the government in the aftermath of the 2006 election and then gained important positions after Fidesz’s victory in the 2010 elections. The club, which held its meetings in various venues such as Buda Castle and the Ybl Palace in the city centre of Budapest, was later joined by several well-known public figures. Among them were Calvinist Bishop Zoltán Balog, former member of the government, former President Katalin Novák and Imre Juhász, current President of the Constitutional Court.

The exclusion has hit Magyar particularly hard. On one hand, it was another milestone in a process in which he was increasingly marginalized from the more influential Fidesz circles. On the other hand, his relationship with Gulyás, with whom his close friendship had soured months earlier when Péter Magyar and Judit Varga divorced, became even more tense. Gulyás, who had known both of them for a long time, clearly sided with Judit Varga during the divorce.

In November 2023, Magyar and Gulyás made one more attempt to settle their differences. But the conversation did not go well. Magyar, who had already criticized the Orbán government’s actions in front of his friends, told Gulyás that he had had enough and would soon go public. The minister laughed and said that no one would be interested in Magyar’s opinion, since he was still relatively unknown at the time.

They met again at the Christmas reception of János Lázár, Minister of Construction and Transport, in December 2023. They agreed to meet again between the two holidays. But this did not happen.

About a month later, Péter Magyar stepped onto the scene and turned Hungarian domestic politics upside down. Within a short time, he became Viktor Orbán’s main opposition challenger and the prime target of the Fidesz propaganda machine.

Direkt36 wanted to find out how Péter Magyar, who comes from a conservative family background and has been active in high-ranking Fidesz circles throughout his adult life, got here. In recent months we have spoken to nearly forty people, including Péter Magyar, who know the details of his story. From these conversations, a picture emerged that Magyar never really fit into the disciplined Fidesz community, even when he agreed with the main political directions. Although he tried to move to higher positions within the government, he was not allowed to do so, mainly because of his confrontational personality and frequent critical remarks. Later on, in his private life and in the political arena, he burned more and more bridges before he came to a complete reversal of the world in which he himself had long lived.

This transformation began years ago in Brussels, the Belgian capital, known for its grey bureaucracy and unpleasant weather.

I. IN BRUSSELS

Varga and Magyar started to build their carreers in Brussels Photo: Ank Kumar / Wikimedia

In the early 2010s members of the Hungarian government appeared at the Permanent Representation in Brussels, which represents Hungary at the EU level, to report on their current negotiations. It was a boring, routine event for most of the people working there. At these staff meetings, ministers did not reveal any big secrets, but only gave formal presentations, so when asked at the end of their presentations if anyone had any questions, most members of staff remained silent.

Péter Magyar was an exception. He usually asked a question and added a few comments to what was said. These comments became so widely known within the walls of the building that even his wife joked about them. Years later, Judit Varga, then Minister of Justice, also visited the Permanent Representation (PR), where she gave her ministerial presentation. This time, however, no one asked her any questions. “’Péter is not here, so there is no one to ask questions,” Varga scoffed, referring to the fact that her husband was already working elsewhere.

Péter Magyar came into contact with the Hungarian government’s Brussels extension of the PR after he and his wife moved to Brussels in 2009. Varga then got a job in the Belgian capital. Previously, she worked as an assistant to János Áder, one of Fidesz’s most influential politicians, who later continued his career as a Member of the European Parliament. While Varga was working, Magyar was at home with their first child, born shortly before.

Magyar and Varga began their lives in Brussels and established contact with other Hungarians living there since the country joined the EU in 2004. Many of them recalled how important for Péter Magyar patriotism and Christianity was at that time. He made no secret of his disdain for Hungary’s previous socialist-liberal government and its prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsány. “He hated the MSZP party and the Gyurcsány world,” said one acquaintance, who said Magyar could not imagine that “an opposition politician could even have a good thought”.

He was also active against what he saw as harmful left-wing government action. As a trainee lawyer, he provided free legal aid to victims of police abuse during the 2006 protests against the socialist-liberal government. His conservative worldview was also influenced by his family background. His maternal grandmother, Teréz Mádl, was the sister of Ferenc Mádl, who was elected President of the Republic by Fidesz and the conservative MDF party. His maternal grandfather was the conservative-minded former Supreme Court judge Pál Erőss, who was known for his TV show “Legal Cases”, during Hungary’s communist era.

According to those who knew him, Magyar was so dogmatic about his worldview that he could easily get into a row with anyone who disagreed with him one hundred percent.

“You could tell where Magyar was at the party by the fact that there was an argument,” said one acquaintance.

In the end, not only did Varga get a job in Brussels, but Magyar was later able to find work too. In the first half of 2011, Hungary took over the rotating EU presidency, and the increased responsibilities meant that the government was hiring new people all the time. Magyar says that those who were already living in Brussels and could arrange accommodation had an advantage. This is how Magyar became a diplomat at the PR.

And there, partly thanks to his wife, his career began to take off. Magyar told Direkt36 that his wife, who was an assistant in the EP, was also involved in public health issues. She met a woman representing a pharmaceutical company, who turned out to be the wife of Olivier Várhelyi, the current European Commissioner, who was already working in a prominent position. Not only the two women, but later their husbands became friends. Thus, after Várhelyi left the European Commission at the end of the Hungarian EU Presidency to become second-in-command of the PR, he chose Magyar as his chief of staff.

Magyar was a confidant of Várhelyi for several years from 2011. “They also went out for drinks together, they were close,” said a diplomat working in Brussels at the time.

But their friendship soured around 2015. This was during the period when Várhelyi moved up the ranks and took over the leadership of the PR. According to a government official who had previously worked in Brussels, Várhelyi was angry with Magyar, because he had repeatedly acted on his behalf but without his knowledge on various matters. According to sources with information about what happened, the conflict between the two eventually escalated to the point where Várhelyi parted company with Magyar in a harsh and vocal manner.

Magyar denied this to Direkt36, and said without giving specifics, that as chief of staff he had taken on a lot of conflict for Várhelyi, who, in his opinion, did not stand up for him. “I didn’t take this lightly, and I let him have it” he said. We sent Várhelyi several questions about this, but he did not respond to our enquiries.

Magyar stayed at the PR after his relationship with Várhelyi soured. In his new position, he oversaw relations between the Orbán government and the EP from 2015 until autumn 2018. He left this post because Varga’s political career was starting to take off in Hungary. Her husband followed her back to Budapest.

II. THE MINISTER’S HUSBAND

Péter Magyar and Judit Varga attending an event where prime minister Viktor Orbán gave a speech Photo: kormany.hu

In mid-February 2020, on the eve of Viktor Orbán’s annual State of the Country address, an unusual question was put to a member of staff of the Ministry of Justice, led by Judit Varga. Péter Magyar asked the ministry employee, “I will be sitting in the front row, won’t I?”

Senior government politicians usually arrive alone for the annual event, and ministers rarely sit in the front row with their spouses. The ministry employee was therefore uncomfortable with Magyar’s request, but was keen to please his boss’s husband. So he called one of the leaders of the Fidesz party foundation, the Polgári Magyarországért Alapítvány (Foundation for Civic Hungary), which organized the event, and relayed the request.

The lobbying was successful. While Orbán was reviewing the country’s situation on the stage, Varga’s husband was sitting in the front row next to her.

Magyar told Direkt36 that he attended events like this not only because he was interested in politics, but also because he had a role in building up his wife in the public eye, who became an influential politician partly thanks to him.

“Probably the wives of other government members didn’t even know where they were because they were, say, cooking at home. And they probably didn’t do half of their spouse’s work, they didn’t build them up,” he said of why he felt entitled to sit next to his wife at the annual review.

Varga’s political career took off after Fidesz’s election victory in 2018. That was when Gergely Gulyás took over the Prime Minister’s Office from János Lázár. Gulyás maintained friendly relations with both Varga and Magyar.

Magyar met Gulyás at Pázmány Péter Catholic University, where they both studied law. The fact that they shared a flat during their scholarship in Hamburg also deepened of their friendship. Later, in the early 2000s, they joined Fidesz in Budapest’s 5th District together. Following the leaking of the socialist prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsány’s scandalous speech in 2006, that caused political turmoil in Hungary, Magyar and Gulyás provided legal assistance to those injured in police violence against protesters. Gulyás and Varga knew each other from their days as trainee lawyers. Gulyás introduced the two to each other in 2005 and they later got married. Gulyás not only witnessed Magyar’s wedding but also became godfather to one of the couple’s children.

Although both Magyar and Gulyás played an active role in the events of 2006 on Fidesz’s side, it was Gulyás who benefited the most. It was during this period that he developed close ties with key Fidesz politicians such as Zoltán Balog and József Szájer, who not only got him into parliament after 2010, but also made him one of Fidesz’s deputy parliamentary group leaders. And when the gradually succeeding Gulyás was appointed Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office in 2018, he chose Judit Varga as his State Secretary for EU Relations.

But before Varga’s appointment was announced, Gulyás asked Magyar during a friendly chat on the shores of Lake Balaton whether he would mind if his wife were given such a high position. According to Magyar, he agreed to the idea, but asked Gulyás why Varga was chosen and not him. Magyar said that he was interested in politics too and knew the political players well. Magyar said that Gulyás had answered his question by saying that the Orbán and other members of the government would like to see a woman in the post, and that Magyar lacked the willingness to compromise with others.

Although Varga eventually became state secretary, Gulyás did not forget about Magyar. In the following years, Magyar was appointed to senior positions in several state-owned companies: from September 2018 he headed a board of directors of the Hungarian Development Bank (MFB), and from June 2019 he became CEO of the Student Loan Centre (Diákhitel Központ). According to sources with insight into what happened, Gulyás played a key role in Magyar’s appointments, repeatedly arranging for his friend to get well-paid jobs at various state-owned companies. (Gulyás did not respond to our request for comment. In his response to our question about Gulyás’ role in his promotions, Magyar wrote: “I guess it was just that he sent my CV to the supervising minister.”)

Varga, meanwhile, did not remain state secretary for long with Gulyás. Orbán was so pleased with her performance that he made her justice minister in his government in July 2019. “My wife and I laughed at the fact that for two weeks I had more employees than her,” Magyar said, referring to Varga’s appointment to the government shortly after his appointment as head of the Student Loan Centre.

This came at a time when the government was beginning to expect an increasingly active social media presence from Fidesz politicians. As minister, Varga became one of the Fidesz politicians most adept at managing social media. On Facebook, she quickly amassed more than 100,000 followers. And in the government, she has had one of the most interactions on Facebook, alongside Viktor Orbán and Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó.

Magyar, who at the time was one of the administrators of his wife’s social networking sites, played a major role in this. According to Magyar, he recorded one of Varga’s most memorable videos with his phone on their property, in which his wife was showing off her football skills while juggling with a ball 37 times. “By the way, she can juggle 105, but our children were crying and we had to stop the recording,” he said of the video.

Although Magyar was not officially a member of the Justice Department’s press office, he was constantly going into the department’s building and was involved in figuring out the communications around his wife. “He was constantly pouring out ideas,” said a former ministry official, referring to the fact that Magyar wrote a large part of Varga’s Facebook posts.

However, the husband was so obsessed with Varga’s social media presence that he soon found himself in conflict with members of the ministry’s press department. According to a source with insight into the matter, Magyar even made comments about the comma errors in a “bullying style”. According to the source, there were cases where the ministry’s press officer complained in the morning about how many messages he had received from Magyar that day.

“They didn’t like to work, and I wanted to be able to introduce Judit to the people,” Magyar said of the ministry’s press department and his conflict with them.

However, managing a Facebook page and working for state-owned companies did not satisfy Magyar, who, like his wife, wanted to enter politics. According to an acquaintance of his, when the post of state secretary for EU development at the Ministry of Innovation and Technology (ITM) fell vacant in the summer of 2020 after Zsigmond Perényi’s departure, he tried to get it. However, this did not work out, as László Palkovics, who oversaw the ministry, temporarily took over the supervision of the area after Perényi’s departure, and EU affairs were later taken away from the ITM.

Magyar said that during this period there were several talks about him becoming a state secretary or deputy state secretary. According to him, there were possibilities to get a position at the ITM and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, but among other reasons, Palkovics and Szijjártó’s decisions meant that these did not materialise.

His ambitions were not helped by the fact that his marriage had broken down in the meantime.

III. THE DIVORCE

Gergely Gulyás (in white shirt) has known both Magyar and Varga for a long time. Photo: Varga Judit / Facebook

Péter Magyar and Judit Varga made several attempts to save their relationship in 2021. For example, they tried to socialize, but these attempts did not always go well.

On one occasion, they invited a couple of friends to dinner at their apartment on Kútvölgyi út in the 12th District of Budapest. As the guests were also in government positions, at one point the conversation turned to politics, including EU affairs. On one issue of a legal nature, however, Varga and Magyar took opposing positions.

Magyar, who was already known for his fierce defense of his point of view, was particularly drawn into the debate this time. With a loud voice, clinging to the table, he tried to brush aside his wife’s arguments. The increasingly tense argument became so embarrassing for the couple that the guests soon left. (Magyar told Direkt36 that the couple left because his ex-wife had a quarrel with the female member of the other couple. Varga did not respond to our request for comment.)

Varga and Magyar couldn’t save their relationship, and finally announced their divorce in March 2023. Magyar not only suffered emotionally, but he also had to come to terms with the fact that opportunities on the government’s side were beginning to slip away.

Even before the divorce, Magyar was not necessarily popular in government circles. Although he has held senior positions in state-owned companies, he has never held a higher political position. According to government sources, the reason for this was not that Magyar was considered untalented, but that he was perceived as too self-motivated and not a team player. According to people who knew Magyar and Gulyás too, Gulyás himself was not in favour of turning Magyar into a politician.

“He was constantly taking jabs at people” one source said of Magyar. At a meeting at lake Balaton, for example, he made such personal, private remark about Ernő Schaller-Baross, a current Fidesz MEP, that the debate almost escalated to violence. (Schaller-Baross said he did not wish to comment on private matters. “I can’t recall anything like that, at most a misunderstanding,” Magyar wrote of the incident, but did not elaborate on what exactly he meant.)

Magyar has also made critical comments about government policy and the pro-Fidesz economic world. In April 2019, for example, he posted on Facebook about the huge sums of money offered by French corporations to rebuild the Notre-Dame shortly after it was burned down. “This is where the real national >>capital class<< begins,” he said, jabbing at big businessmen close to the prime minister.

Magyar admitted to Direkt36 that he did not hold back his snide remarks during this period. “I was indeed critical many times, sometimes in a funny way, sometimes not so funny,” he said, adding that Gergely Gulyás was the only one of the Fidesz elite who could tolerate his remarks. According to one of his acquaintances, even at that time Magyar was still regarded in government circles as “a friend of Minister Gulyás”. Gulyás and Magyar appeared together several times, for example, in the autumn of 2021 they sat next to each other at the premiere of the government propaganda film Elk*rtuk.

However, the divorce also led to a breakdown in Magyar’s relationship with Gulyás. The minister sided with Varga in the divorce, which happened in 2023. “Gergő sided with Judit, and acknowledged that she was right” a government source said, referring to Gulyás.

After that, Magyar’s options became increasingly limited. Several government sources said that after the divorce, Magyar was less and less trusted, and that he was being pushed out of certain government circles. According to a Fidesz politician who knew Magyar, this was done to limit his access to important information. As part of this process, in the autumn of 2023 he was expelled from the Stádium Klub, which had many influential government figures among its members.

Not only did his former friends turn their backs on him, but his positions in state-owned companies were also under threat. One such was his membership of the supervisory board of Magyar Bankholding (MBH), majority-owned by Lőrinc Mészáros, a close Orbán ally. Péter Magyar was previously delegated to this post by the Ministry of National Economy.

After it was suggested in early 2024 that Magyar could be recalled from this position, he approached Gulyás and Varga. According to government sources familiar with the exchange of messages between the parties, Magyar set up a chat room through the Signal messaging app and wrote to Gulyás and Varga to ensure that he kept his positions, otherwise he could cause problems. (This episode was later reported by Varga and Gulyás, both of whom claimed that Magyar had threatened them. Magyar denied the threat in response to our question.)

Since Gulyás and Varga did not respond to this message, Magyar soon made good on his promise.

IV. TAKING THE STAGE

Péter Magyar during his interview with Partizán in February 2024 Source: Partizán / Youtube

When an article on 2 Februrary 2024 revealed that Katalin Novák, the president of Hungary pardoned a person who helped cover up pedophile crimes in a child care facility, it was not yet known what serious consequences the case would have, but Magyar took further steps to leave the Fidesz system.

That day, he met a long-time public figure in a Buda confectionery shop, where Magyar said he felt that the government was increasingly limiting his options and making him impossible to work with. For this reason, he asked his friend for advice on whether to confront the government, keep quiet or leave the country.

During the conversation, he revealed that he had an audio recording of Judit Varga saying incriminating things about the Völner-Schadl case. Magyar was referring to a corruption case involving government officials in which Varga’s former state secretary, Pál Völner, was accused of accepting bribes from the president of the bailiffs’ office, György Schadl, in exchange for favors.

At one point in the conversation, Magyar mentioned that he was considering running against Varga in the election, i.e. against Fidesz. The acquaintance thought this was a bad idea and tried to talk Magyar out of his plan. He argued that it would make his ex-wife and himself look ridiculous.

Magyar felt the audio recording in his possession was a serious trump card. He also called a well-known opposition politician, telling him that he had “serious material” on the Völner-Schadl case. He was due to meet the politician in the first days of February last year, but the meeting did not take place as Magyar cancelled the appointment a few hours before it was scheduled.

In the days that followed, events escalated rapidly. On 10 February last year, not only the president of the republic, Katalin Novák, who had granted the pardon, but also Judit Varga, who had countersigned the pardon as justice minister, announced her retirement from public life.

With this background, Magyar felt the time was right to go public. Whereas a few days earlier he had only criticized some government officials in informal conversations with journalists independent of the government, on the day of the resignations he did so publicly on social media. He published a Facebook post that immediately attracted a lot of attention, criticising, among others, Antal Rogán, the head of the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office and announced that he would resign from his positions in state-owned companies and from the supervisory board of the partly state-owned Magyar Bankholding.

The next day, on 11 February, he gave an interview to Partizán, an independent media outlet, where he also said he was outraged by the way the Rogán-led propaganda machine had treated Novák and Varga in the aftermath of the pardon case. In the interview Magyar criticized not only Rogán’s activities but also the enrichment of the Prime Minister’s family.

The interview, which reached more than 2.5 million views and caused a major backlash, with Magyar attracting huge interest and starting to exploit the fact that the pardon case had forced Fidesz into a defensive position. Although Magyar said in the interview that the suggestion that he would enter politics was a joke, he soon changed his mind.

V. PREPARATION

Magyar started to draw a lot of attention Photo: Magyar Péter / Facebook

A few weeks after the Partizán interview, on 6 March last year, Péter Magyar was a guest of the Szeretem Magyarországot Klub (I Love Hungary Club) at a private event in the Budapest cultural centre.

The organization’s members include several businessmen and former politicians who are critical of the Orbán government. That evening, between 70 and 80 members of the club gathered to listen to a panel discussion with Judit Varga’s ex-husband Magyar, who has already revealed some details of his political ambitions. He said, for example, that he was thinking of founding a political movement, but that the municipal and EP elections in June were so close that he would not have time to found his own party before then.

Following the on-stage discussion, two of Magyar’s accompanying persons engaged in a discussion with some members of the audience. One of them was Magyar’s brother, Márton Magyar, a journalist who usually wears a shirt and a suit vest and used to work for as a television reporter. Later, for a few months in 2020, he worked alongside András Fekete-Győr, then president of the liberal Momentum party, in a communications role and in early 2024 he helped the campaign of Koloman Brenner, the right-wing Jobbik’s candidate for mayor of Budapest.

The other accompanying person talking to audience members also had links to the opposition. Gábor Juhász, a bald, glasses-wearing man, was one of the opposition coalition’s financial leaders during the 2022 election campaign. He was also in contact with some businessmen who supported the opposition. What most people who visited the opposition’s campaign headquarters remember about Juhász is that he always wore a mask because of covid, and always had his big black dog with him. Juhász was brought into the campaign team by the opposition’s candidate for prime minister, Péter Márki-Zay, and is currently the financial director of Márki-Zay’s movement.

According to sources present at the March event, Márton Magyar and Gábor Juhász together approached one of the club’s wealthier members to contact him on behalf of Péter Magyar. The club member was not surprised, as he had already known Juhász from Márki-Zay’s campaign. That evening, Juhász and Márton Magyar did not ask the businessman for money, but simply brought Péter Magyar to his attention. (Magyar told Direkt36 that Juhász did not accompany him to the event, and later met him a few times, but Juhász has no position in Tisza. Juhász did not respond to our request for comment.)

This was another moment that highlighted how much the world had changed in a few months with Péter Magyar. By this time, he was not only distancing himself from the government, but was already thinking about how he could become a challenger to Fidesz.

For example, he started to consider running in the elections just a few days after the Patrizán interview, before the “I Love Hungary Club” event. At that time, however, his goals were much more modest. At the end of February last year, he told an acquaintance that the centre-right party he led could achieve 15-20% of the vote in the 2026 parliamentary elections.

Thus, at this meeting, Magyar had not yet reckoned with the fact that his political emergence could completely sideline the opposition. A few weeks later, however, it became clear that his goals could be more ambitious.

VI. ORBÁN’S CHALLENGER

Péter Magyar and Viktor Orbán at an EP Plenary session in 2024 Photo: Alain Rolland / EP

Magyar was excited about 15 March, a national holiday in Hungary, as it was the day of one of his first major events.

The day before, he had invited journalist Péter Kóczián, to his home to review the nearly twenty-page long speech he was going to deliver. While Kóczián was reading the draft speech, a source who was in the room said Magyar was waiting anxiously, saying things like “why aren’t we making progress”. The journalist finally suggested deleting some passages, which Magyar accepted.

Magyar, who was preparing to take on a political role, also asked for help in organizing the 15 March event. The actor Ervin Nagy, who had never hidden his antipathy towards the government and who met Magyar after the Partizán interview, asked several people if he would be involved. In the end, the theatre director Márk Radnai agreed to organize the protest. Radnai had previously threatened several theatre critics, so he was known for his aggressive actions. At the same time, he was also known for his ability to produce impressive videos and powerful visual material. He also had political experience.

This was partly thanks to his family. His father, László Radnai, was the communications director of Jobbik, and worked as a consultant for Fidesz and the liberal SZDSZ before 2010. In 2019 he has worked for green opposition politician Gergely Karácsony in his campaign when he ran for mayor of Budapest. Several former members of Karácsony’s campaign team said that at the time, he was entrusted with editing video summaries of campaign events. He also directed Karácsony’s campaign song, sung by Tamás Szabó Kimmel, a well-known actor. Even though Karácsony’s campaign turned out to be a success, Radnai did not follow him to the City Council. (The press secretary of Karácsony wrote that Radnai helped Karácsony’s campaign on a voluntary basis, but after the 2019 election this voluntary cooperation ended.)

The 15 March event was a success and attracted large crowds. Magyar spoke at the event of his desire to create a political force in the center. And in interviews after his speech, he revealed that he will run in the upcoming EP elections. As there was no time left to found a new party, Magyar took over the leadership of a previously founded party called Tisza.

As part of his political building process, on 26 March last year he made public a secretly recorded conversation with Judit Varga. In it, Varga, who was then justice minister, said that Antal Rogán and his colleagues had removed parts of the Völner-Schadl investigation files that concerned them.

By the time Magyar had taken these steps, he had assembled a group of close allies on whose support he relied in the following months. It included Márton Magyar, Ervin Nagy, Márk Radnai and Péter Magyar’s girlfriend at the time, Evelin Vogel, through whom several others joined the political movement.

The team needed an office where they could discuss day-to-day issues. Worried about possible surveillance, and with no significant income, they chose the apartment of Ervin Nagy’s wife in a prominent location in the city center Budapest, in the Régi posta street. The 110-square-metre, three-room apartment was vacant, and the Nagy family usually used it as Airbnb accommodation.

Magyar had several important conversations in this apartment. On the evening of 20 April he and several members of his team met here with publicist Róbert Puzsér, who was running for mayor of Budapest in 2019 and with Péter Zaránd, who led not only Puzsér’s 2019 campaign but also Péter Márki-Zay’s prime ministerial 2022 campaign. At the beginning of the conversation, the topic of that day’s “I bike Budapest” bike parade was raised, in which Magyar took part with a bike that was mocked by the government media.

The discussion then turned to more serious topics. Magyar brought up that he is being persuaded to run for mayor and is considering it. But Puzsér and Zaránd tried to talk him out of it. They argued that he would probably lose against incumbent Karácsony and that he should only enter a contest where he had a chance of winning. They argued that no matter how many seats he would win in the EP elections, he would be able to communicate it as a success.

Magyar later decided, in line with the Puzsér’s proposal, to focus on the EP elections on 9 June rather than the municipal elections. The strategy paid off, Magyar’s momentum continued in the following weeks, and his Tisza party achieved 29.6 percent of the vote, winning seven EP seats. This was not only better than any opposition party’s result in the last 14 years, but also caused an awkward moment for Fidesz leaders. The 44.8 percent result for the governing party was a huge surprise because it was the first EP election in a long time in which Fidesz received less than 50 percent of the vote.

Despite the successful election, conflicts within Tisza led to several people from Magyar’s inner circle being driven out of the party during the summer. Evelin Vogel broke up with Magyar, and later not only attacked his former boyfriend in the pro-government media, but also leaked audio recordings made by her that painted an unfavourable picture of the leader of the Tisza party. Magyar’s brother also distanced himself from the party. (Márton Magyar wrote to Direkt36, that in the spring of 2024 he was happy to help his brother, but he did not want to work for a political party, so he returned to his profession, journalism.)

The conflicts did not affect Tisza’s popularity, which continued to grow after the election. According to the latest survey of the independent pollster, Medián polls the party’s support is now ahead of Fidesz. In November last year, Tisza stood at 47 percent among certain party voters, Fidesz at 36 percent. In March this year, the figure was 46-37 percent in favour of Tisza.

Ágnes Gólya contributed to this article.

Cover picture: Somogyi Péter (szarvas) / Telex