This month's cover story explores what a post-Orbán Hungary means for Europe's hard right.
Some political events matter more than others. Occasionally, their significance announces itself immediately: a declaration of war, a coup, a scandal so consequential it’s obvious from the outset that it will mark an ending.
More often, though, significance is assigned rather than revealed, as observers rush to declare turning points whose meaning only settles into focus with time.
After the Tisza party’s landslide victory in Hungary’s April election, commentators made breathless claims about what Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s downfall meant for the world. Some cast it as an international victory for liberalism. Others heralded the twilight of Europe’s hard right.
Within Hungary, however, the reality was more pedestrian. Despite Orbán’s relentless fearmongering about war and chaos, voters on both sides were driven largely by familiar concerns: the cost of living, the prospect of buying a home, the ability to start a family. And it begged the question, if this election was ultimately shaped chiefly by local economic grievances, how much did it really reveal about the future of Europe’s far right?
As my reporting for this month’s cover story shows, the answer is probably less than many assumed. Orbán may have inspired admiration across the European right, but few parties shared either his ideological ambition or his willingness to push democratic constraints to their limits.
Writing about what is unlikely to happen, rather than predicting sweeping transnational trends, is not always the surest route to clicks or shares. But questioning the prevailing mood, or taking the long view of today’s events, has its own value. At the very least, we hope, it’s the kind of journalism that keeps certain readers coming back.
In the eight months since joining The Parliament as an editor, I have learned that these are also the stories our reporters most enjoy pursuing.
In this month’s edition, Peder Schaefer travels to the Baltics to ask what a stalled railway project reveals about the European Union’s ability to meet its 21st-century ambitions for defense and transportation. On neighboring pages, Paula Soler unpacks how artificial intelligence is reshaping the battlefield — and how regulation struggles to keep pace — while Federica Di Sario pulls back the lens on Europe’s energy crisis and asks whether it might all have been avoided.
— Carl-Johan Karlsson, News & Features Editor