Twelve years of Orban: How the EU has failed to rein in Hungary's democratic backsliding
Viktor Orban, the ultra-conservative Hungarian Prime Minister on the cusp of securing a fifth consecutive term, has built his career on bashing the European Union and has mostly gotten away with it.
Yet, his influence on the bloc and its institutions is chequered at best.
Orban, 58, now the EU's longest-serving leader could on Sunday renew his time at the helm of the eastern country for another four years. His nationalist-populist party, Fidesz, currently has a slight lead over the opposition, which banded together to present a single candidate for the top job and in most constituencies.
His campaign was, as is now usual, filled with attacks against Brussels — its "imperialist tantrums" and "pro-immigrant bureaucrats" — and thin allusions to a possible Huxit.
For years now, Orban has implemented reforms of the judiciary, media and civil society he knew would put him on a collision course with Brussels all while pocketing EU money. Through it all, he cast himself as the protector of traditional — read Christian — European values and promoted an "illiberal democracy" agenda, which once garnered him the moniker "the dictator" by former Commission Chief Jean-Claude Juncker.
What this has revealed is that EU institutions are largely unable — or unwilling — to sanction such authoritarian backsliding.
"This anti-Brussels rhetoric is around almost since he took over power and it became more violent after each election," Zsolt Enyedi, a professor and senior researcher at the Central European University's Democracy Institute, told Euronews.
"European Union institutions responded to this barrage of attacks after a while, but they let Orban get away with them for many, many years. Orban was shielded by (former German Chancellor Angela)
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