TIRANA—The global attention to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s electoral defeat on April 12 demonstrated his outsized role on the global stage. During the sixteen years he held the premiership, the ideological crusader against Western liberalism was able to capitalize on his country’s veto powers in the European Union (EU) to effectively extort most of Europe through his strategic partnerships with Russia and China. More recently, Orbán gained prominence for his alignment with a US administration sympathetic to Hungary’s domestic conservative agenda and sovereigntist antipathy toward Brussels. Describing the outsized international prominence of Orbán’s ideological project, Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev likened the Hungarian leader to a Fidel Castro for the global right.
Yet this global notoriety often eclipsed Orbán’s role as a regional hegemon and vector of Russian and Chinese influence in the Balkans. Orbán never managed to build a sustainable illiberal axis within the EU or Central Europe, largely because none of his European partners were as consistently successful in elections as he was. But he was arguably more successful as the patron and enabler of an existing illiberal axis to the south of Hungary’s borders.
Over the past decade, Orbán used his grip over the Hungarian state, as well as Russian and Chinese patronage, to build an infrastructure of influence in the Western Balkans to support his political allies—chief among them Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić. Orbán also positioned Hungary as a gateway for the region’s EU accession path, which, unlike Ukraine’s, he nominally supported. Thus, Orbán cast himself as the sponsor of like-minded regimes like Vučić’s, in which he saw either instruments to pressure Brussels or future allies in a different type of EU.
Orbán’s backing of Balkan strongmen helped entrench democratic backsliding in the region. At the same time, the Hungarian leader’s efforts reinforced enlargement skepticism among other EU member states, which grew wary of adding new potential trojan horses like Hungary. The significance of Péter Magyar’s election victory for the Western Balkans is that his government will now inherit the legacy of Orbán’s regional diplomacy and veto over the accession process. This leadership transition will likely have implications for Vučić’s regime in Belgrade, and perhaps even how quickly Western Balkans countries and Ukraine join the EU.
Orbán’s axis of strongmen
Orbán’s deep strategic cooperation with Vučić was anchored around both an ideological affinity and a shared geopolitical interest in hedging against the West by facilitating Chinese and Russian interests. For example, Serbia’s hosting of Russian energy assets played an important role in Orbán’s efforts to turn Hungary into a transit hub for Russian energy imports to Europe. This is why the two countries had strategic cooperation agreements on gas and oil, and why they were in discussions about nuclear power. Over the past decade, Vučić and Orbán had also turned their countries into Chinese manufacturing and trade hubs for European markets, a process that included the construction of Chinese-financed railways and roads connecting both countries to the Chinese-owned port of Piraeus in Greece. The two countries’ significance for China was made evident during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s most recent visit to Europe in 2024, when he chose Budapest and Belgrade as two of three stops along with Paris.
The links between Hungary and the Western Balkans also extended into wide-ranging investments by Hungarian companies in the region’s strategic sectors. For example, in Albania, where over the past decade the Budapest-based IT company 4IG became a major telecom player, Hungary’s Wizz Air became a dominant airline and the Hungarian OTP entered the banking sector. According to the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP), Hungarian foreign direct investment in the Western Balkans rose from €690 million in 2016 to €1.5 billion in 2020.
This deepening economic cooperation went hand in hand with support for friendly regimes, including through investments by Orbán loyalists in media outlets in North Macedonia and Slovenia. In 2018, Orbán granted asylum to Nikola Gruevski, a former North Macedonian prime minister. Gruevski faced corruption charges in his home country as part of North Macedonia’s efforts to move toward the EU on rule-of-law issues. Orbán also protected the embattled secessionist leader of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Republika Srpska entity, Milorad Dodik, from EU sanctions and propped up his government with financing when others withdrew. Orbán was even reportedly prepared to use Hungarian peacekeeping forces to extract him from Bosnia and Herzegovina last year during Dodik’s standoff with the country’s judiciary.
More recent events open the possibility that support from Orbán was a two-way street. During a campaign in which Orbán focused on criticizing Ukraine, Vučić announced the discovery of explosives in Serbian territory near a pipeline supplying Hungary with Russian gas, and Orbán implied that Ukraine may have been responsible. Magyar alleged that the explosives were part of a false flag operation, and even Serbian intelligence seemed to distance itself from the implication that Ukraine was involved to save face in the West.
What Magyar’s victory means for the Western Balkans
Magyar rode his opposition coalition to victory with an electoral agenda largely centered on domestic issues, such as corruption and the rule of law. He is expected to prioritize these same issues as prime minister. On international affairs, his main focus appears to be the restoration of Hungarian relations with the EU and NATO. In the campaign, Magyar emphasized the need to “rebuild Hungary’s credibility… acting as a constructive, reliable partner that contributes to a stronger Europe.” This will likely start by unlocking EU assistance to Ukraine.
Yet in Magyar’s first postelection press conference, the Western Balkans featured prominently. Speaking to reporters, he adopted a combative tone against Vučić, announcing that there would be an investigation into the alleged pipeline bombing attack incident. He also claimed that he knew “who the godfather of the Orbán, Vučić, Fico friendship was,” implying that Russian President Vladimir Putin was pulling the strings in the regional axis. Vučić promptly replied by calling the statements “stupid” and “foolish.”
Orbán’s ouster comes at an already difficult time domestically for Vučić, with his popularity in decline. It may have some effect in Serbia’s scheduled presidential elections next spring, and it could drive Vučić to postpone anticipated snap parliamentary elections. Yet the biggest impact from the loss of his biggest backer in Europe is the further weakening of Vučić’s international standing. Magyar’s win also raises questions about the fate of many joint Serbia-Hungary regional projects, especially those related to Russian energy.
Any move by Magyar to pivot away from Hungary’s dependence on Russian energy sources will put Serbia in an even more difficult position with respect to its own dependencies on Moscow. It might even forcefully accelerate Belgrade’s pivot toward the West on that front. Meanwhile, Croatia—whose prime minister, Andrej Plenković, seemed delighted with Magyar’s victory—seems poised to gain. Croatia’s bid to supply the region with non-Russian oil, through the proposed Adria Pipeline, and US liquefied natural gas, via the Southern Interconnector in Bosnia and Herzegovina, seems likely to move ahead.
The favorable dynamics created by Magyar’s victory may temporarily give a political boost to the prospects of EU enlargement; while Magyar has expressed skepticism toward Ukraine’s membership bid, his criticism has been limited to the speed of its accession path, and he has said the issue must be decided in a referendum. The ouster of an enabler of authoritarians and the potential for Hungary to move away from its status as a rule-of-law pariah has also strengthened Brussels’s hand in its conditionality policy toward Western Balkans countries. This is especially important at a time when the EU is threatening Serbia with funding freezes over its democratic backsliding and its continued ties to Russia, and as Brussels has warned that it may halt Albania’s accession momentum over rule-of-law concerns.
