Orbán re-emerges after long summer holiday, as Magyar strips homophobia from child protection laws (Day 128 of the Tisza government)
Prime minister Péter Magyar tackles the child protection law, moving to strip the Orban-era conflation of homosexuality with paedophilia from Hungary’s laws.
The series continues as we report on developments following April’s historic election and on the steps taken since then by the Tisza government. This week, we cover the following topics:
On Saturday (12 September), Viktor Orbán returned from his long holiday and delivered a speech at Fidesz’s traditional gathering in Kötcse, near Lake Balaton. In an interview on Sunday, he threatened the staff of the newly-established National Office for Asset Protection and Recovery.
Prime minister Péter Magyar chose the same day to present his government’s report on child protection, before setting off on another nationwide tour. On Tuesday, parliament approved an amendment to the child protection law, removing provisions that conflated paedophilia with homosexuality.
Lőrinc Mészáros, Orbán’s chief oligarch and Hungary’s richest man, says he would cooperate with the Tisza government. Meanwhile, police detained another billionaire in connection with a corruption case. The businessman previously had dealings with Orbán’s son-in-law, István Tiborcz.
Following his defeat in the April election, Viktor Orbán virtually disappeared. While his party claimed that Tisza was building an authoritarian regime in Hungary and dismantling democracy, the former prime minister first travelled to the United States for the football World Cup and then went on holiday in Serbia and Croatia. His retreat into the background may have been a deliberate strategy, but in the meantime, his remaining supporters were left without anyone to give them direction.
Expectations were therefore high ahead of the traditional gathering of the Fidesz inner circle in Kötcse, where Orbán provides internal guidance to the party at a “picnic” every September. The former prime minister had nothing new to say: according to him, the Tisza government’s goal is to turn Hungary into a colony once again. He named Brussels as the colonial power, and the George Soros network, the intelligence services, EU funding and multinational companies as the instruments of colonisation. Orbán has been repeating these talking points for years.
He also claimed that Tisza had won through lies and that the corruption allegations were political attacks that would likewise be proven false. According to Orbán, having taken over politics, Tisza is now taking control of the economy and will subsequently hand it over to foreign interests.
He also said that Fidesz's grace period was over: until now, they had been on the defensive, but resistance and fighting would now begin.
On Sunday, appearing on a programme hosted by Zsolt Bayer, a pro-Fidesz opinion-maker known for his verbal aggression, Orbán threatened the staff of the National Office for Asset Protection and Recovery, which was established to uncover corruption, with being held to account. He also said they would be monitored and their names made public.
As he had already done during the election campaign, Magyar once again refused to allow Orbán to command all the attention. He scheduled the presentation of a report by the Ministry of Social and Family Affairs on the state of the child protection system for the same day as the Kötcse picnic.
Ágoston Renczes graduated as an economist from Corvinus University of Budapest in 2008. He has been working as a journalist since 2020, mainly writing about Hungarian and Slovak domestic politics, foreign policy, and the economy.
