For greater than a decade, Viktor Orbán’s “intolerant” rule in Hungary has appeared ironclad. However latest European elections have proven that the Hungarian prime minister and his right-hand man are struggling to include an unlikely challenger from inside.
Antal Rogán, who has been by the premier’s facet for 3 many years and is dubbed his “Cardinal Richelieu” by opponents, is at present accountable for the federal government’s media technique. His wide-ranging ministerial portfolio contains secret companies and checks on overseas funding acquired by opposition politicians, impartial shops and rights teams.
In his first interview with worldwide media, Rogán sought to downplay his occasion’s setback within the European parliament vote, during which the ruling Fidesz occasion acquired 45 per cent, its lowest vote share since Hungary joined the EU in 2004.
“You may’t all the time be in a profitable place in authorities,” Rogán informed the Monetary Occasions. “Fairly often another person communicates extra powerfully.”
Rogán was referring to a former Fidesz member-turned-rival, Péter Magyar, who joined a small occasion known as Tisza this 12 months and propelled it to 30 per cent on the poll containers, a primary indication that the Orbán base is fracturing.
Magyar was by no means a distinguished member of Fidesz, however his former spouse Judit Varga was Orbán’s justice minister. They divorced in 2023. Magyar stop Fidesz this 12 months on the day Varga was pressured to resign because the occasion’s lead candidate for the European parliament amidst a toddler abuse scandal.
Rogán dismissed the concept Magyar posed a severe problem to Orbán. He expressed confidence that the prime minister, who’s Europe’s longest-serving premier after taking workplace 14 years in the past, would keep in energy after the following common elections in 2026.
However Rogán himself, who just isn’t as common because the PM, may flip right into a legal responsibility for Orbán. Magyar has accused the premier’s éminence grise of corruption and poisonous disinformation campaigns, together with in regards to the west’s function in aiding Ukraine.
“That is Waterloo for Fidesz,” Magyar stated after the EU election outcomes got here out on June 9. “All of the billions wasted on propaganda, the battle psychosis that the prime minister tried to construct with Antal Rogán . . . that is the start of the tip for Fidesz.”
Magyar, 43, informed the FT that he wouldn’t pull any punches with Rogán, who “misplaced his enchantment as a politician” and “is unaccountable . . . a Richelieu”, in reference to the Seventeenth-century political mastermind who served as chief minister to Louis XIII, king of France.
Little identified outdoors Hungary, Rogán has stayed out of the limelight, operating what he calls the “authorities again workplace”. However he has regularly amassed energy within the media and public administration, influencing sectors resembling banking and data know-how.
His Nationwide Data Centre, an umbrella organisation for intelligence and counter-intelligence companies, was based in 2022. Rogán’s secret companies may additionally feed an investigation into overseas funding allegedly acquired by Magyar, which Rogán described as “a query that should be answered quickly”. Magyar has known as the probe a joke.
“Secret companies are politicised and subjugated to propaganda,” stated Márta Pardavi, co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a rights group, calling the observe “outrageous”.
An economist by coaching, the 52-year-old Rogán defended the Nationwide Data Centre’s work and stated reorganisation of the Hungarian intelligence companies had been prompted by the battle in neighbouring Ukraine. “The prime minister needed extra direct management over them and reintegrated intelligence and counter-intelligence,” he stated.
Rogán denied the corruption allegations Magyar and others had levelled towards him, noting that no costs caught in court docket. He additionally disputed being shielded of prosecution underneath Orbán. “No person is indispensable on this authorities,” he stated, “not even me.”
Regardless of the bruising EU election outcome, Orbán has stood by his longtime ally. “Rogán has an uncanny capacity to make others depend upon him, and Orbán isn’t any exception,” stated an individual aware of the scenario. “He’s satisfied changing Rogán can be like capturing himself in . . . each ft.”
One other one that is aware of Rogán nicely stated that the Richelieu parallel was “spot on” because the Hungarian minister had amassed energy and wealth by making himself indispensable to Orbán.
Rogán rejected the Richelieu comparability as a result of the French minister was a mentor to the king, whereas he’s 9 years youthful than Orbán. “I noticed a person who may renew conservative politics, and he did,” Rogán stated of his first assembly with Orbán within the early Nineties.
Rogán grew up close to Hungary’s western border with Slovenia in a Slovenian-speaking household. Described by friends as sharp, bookish and intensely political, he turned chief home political adviser when Orbán first gained the premiership in 1998.
After spending just a few years as a Budapest district mayor, Rogán returned to parliament in 2010 to guide the Fidesz majority. Among the many first payments he drew up was a media legislation as one of many preliminary steps in direction of Orbán’s intolerant state — and which set Budapest on a collision course with the EU.
The federal government was alleged to have allotted €3.5bn to public occasions and communications since Rogán turned propaganda minister in 2015, based on native media outlet G7. “It’s a cash pump,” stated Gábor Polyák, chair of media research at Budapest’s Eötvös Loránd College. “A totally opaque system of random sums spent with doubtful effectivity.”
Rogán stated the ministry had struck tenders price solely €1.8bn on communications and occasions, together with main worldwide sporting occasions— an quantity that, over 9 years, was “defensible once we evaluate it to our predecessors’ spending”.
Magyar’s success is partially because of the fallout from a toddler intercourse abuse scandal in a village subsequent to Orbán’s hometown — and the failure of Rogán’s propaganda machine in making an attempt to brush the affair underneath the carpet.
“That is the deepest disaster Fidesz has but confronted,” one individual with information of the occasions stated. “And the identical goes for Rogán.”
Magyar stated Rogán can be considered one of his early targets if he gained energy in 2026 and, on the marketing campaign path, urged that the Orbán aide “discover a nation with no extradition treaty with Hungary”.
Rogán declined to debate the kid intercourse abuse scandal however acknowledged that his political profession was tied to Orbán’s tenure.
“I can be within the political area so long as Viktor Orbán is the prime minister,” he stated.
