Orbán’s defeat reshapes Patriots for Europe’s power map

Orbán’s defeat – Viktor Orbán’s loss of Hungary’s election removes the European far right’s most proven model of governing from inside the EU. Patriots for Europe remains the third strongest group in the European Parliament, but the group now faces a practical scramble over wh

When Viktor Orbán stopped winning, the European far right felt it immediately—not as a slogan, but as a missing seat at the table.

Patriots for Europe remains the third strongest group in the European Parliament. yet it has lost the politician who. for years. managed to build a political system out of state power. EU funds. culture war politics. pro-Russian diplomacy. and close ties to Trump’s United States. The friction that had been building for a long time became impossible to ignore only after Hungary’s EU funding was frozen.

The shock is not abstract. It has already changed who can walk into rooms where ministries. negotiations. diplomatic channels and public money move at the speed parties cannot match with conferences or think tanks. In the European far right’s own ecosystem. Orbán wasn’t just another leader—Budapest had been a working address.

Patriots for Europe formed in 2024, signaling a realignment inside the far right. Its ambition was open: change the EU’s approach to migration, green policy, and the war in Ukraine. The Czech Republic could hardly be absent. Andrej Babiš’s ANO moved to the Patriots from the liberal Renew Europe group. putting the Czech Republic’s most influential politician alongside Matteo Salvini’s League. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. and Herbert Kickl’s Austrian Freedom Party.

Yet until then, Babiš had shown little particular interest in any of these parties. The real reason he joined was tied directly to Orbán.

For the European far right. Orbán offered a blueprint: an openly illiberal project functioning inside the European Union ideologically and economically. Hungary could draw EU funds despite Fidesz campaigning against much of the EU’s agenda. Orbán used his seat inside EU decision-making as leverage. even as his government attacked Brussels over rule of law. migration. civil society. media freedom. and minority rights.

By late 2022, the confrontational model began to buckle. Parts of Hungary’s EU funding were suspended or made conditional under EU procedures linked to rule of law concerns—public procurement. anti-corruption safeguards. and judicial independence. Fidesz had also been outside the European People’s Party family since 2021 and was searching for a new parliamentary home. Patriots for Europe, formed after the 2024 European elections, gave it that home. Orbán then became the group’s unofficial spokesman.

The pressure had other sources too. Orbán was facing mounting problems because of his accommodating attitude toward Russia since 24 February 2022. His foreign policy and repeated blocking of EU decisions left both him and Hungary increasingly isolated. When Hungary took over the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU on 1 July 2024. Orbán immediately launched his own “peace mission” to Kyiv. Moscow and Beijing—without being an official EU mission. Most European governments treated it as a solo action that weakened the EU’s common position.

That is why his defeat lands so hard. In this story, Orbán was less an ideology than a mechanism—someone who knew how to make politics feed itself.

Shortly after Patriots for Europe was created. representatives of its member parties gathered at a conference in Madrid. put on caps with the slogan Make Europe Great Again. and resolved to build a European version of the MAGA movement. Orbán, Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini, Geert Wilders, Santiago Abascal, and other far-right representatives stood on the same stage. They spoke about migration, the Green Deal, national sovereignty, the fight against “wokism,” and the decline of Europe. Donald Trump’s victory in the United States was treated as confirmation that the same political language could bring them into power in Europe too. turning the ideological wheel toward coordinated isolationism and nationalism.

Babiš’s relationship with the European Patriots group has been described as ambivalent from the start. One basic thing is known about the Czech prime minister: he likes power and is not afraid to ingratiate himself with it. regardless who embodies it at any given moment. Babiš can boast of his relationship with Orbán and, a few moments later, arrange a meeting with Emmanuel Macron.

Even so, his sudden departure from Renew Europe—where ANO had belonged for many years—came as a surprise. The Czech prime minister had positioned himself differently in Czech politics. presenting himself as a defender of the poor and fishing for votes among the middle and lower middle classes that drifted toward him after the collapse of social democracy. By joining the Patriots, he placed himself inside a far-right European family.

And then the family lost its anchor.

A year passed and Patriots began to convulse in chaos and spasms. The Hungarian elections changed the dynamic of the coalition, shaking it at the foundations. Orbán had been the driving force of the coalition. the face showing the world that this type of politics could succeed and would keep succeeding. Marine Le Pen has never governed France. Geert Wilders had managed to shake up Dutch politics but had never held office and remains primarily a symbol of radicalization. Salvini had passed through the Italian government. but his power was limited by coalitions and the volatility of the country’s politics. Babiš—now into his second term as Czech prime minister—has never been able to maintain continuous power over the country and remains one of the most controversial figures in Czech politics.

Orbán had been different: sixteen years of uninterrupted governance. rebuilding the state. creating a loyal media and economic base. and turning conflict with the European Union into his own political brand. Under his rule. public contracts. EU-funded projects. loyal business circles and parts of the media became closely intertwined. with economic influence reinforcing political influence.

But something started to creak between Orbán and Babiš. It surfaced in a moment that seemed ceremonial and felt consequential: CPAC Hungary.

CPAC Hungary 2026 took place in Budapest on 21 March. It attracted 667 foreign guests from 51 countries and, in total, a few thousand participants. Independent media were denied access to the event. Prominent speakers included Geert Wilders, Herbert Kickl, Alice Weidel, Irakli Kobakhidze, Mateusz Morawiecki, Tom Van Grieken, and Martin Helme. Figures from the American conservative milieu were also in attendance, including Matt Schlapp. Donald Trump supported Orbán in a video message.

Babiš did the same. “Friend Andrej” excused his absence on the grounds of pressing domestic matters, leaving foreign minister Petr Macinka to attend. Macinka compared Orbán to Michelangelo, saying people like Orbán were born once every 500 years.

Yet even with the foreign minister’s efforts, Czech–Hungarian relations had cooled. After Orbán lost the election. Babiš switched to formal English when previously he had communicated publicly with his counterpart in Hungarian. The shift carried a blunt message: for Babiš, Orbán had become an electoral loser.

That raised a question Patriots could not postpone: what would happen next inside the coalition—and who, if anyone, would replace Orbán as the main link to Russia and Trump’s United States.

Babiš now found himself the only sitting prime minister of an EU member state within Patriots for Europe. The logic pointed toward him taking the reins. But nothing of the sort happened. The political career described here depends on his ability to be present wherever it serves his purposes while claiming he has nothing to do with it—or that he is the victim of the situation. Babiš. in this telling. can be a partner to Orbán and Macron. a European pragmatist and a victim of Brussels. a defender of the welfare state and a friend of big business. depending on what the moment requires.

The same pattern shows up in his support for Patriots for Europe. It is expressed, but within limits, and he does not want greater responsibility. That was demonstrated by the first “post-Orbán” meeting of the Patriots in Milan. Orbán had been invited but did not attend. In available reports, Babiš did not appear among the main speakers or quoted figures. Attention was placed on Salvini. Bardella. Wilders. Van Grieken. and others—suggesting the Czech prime minister kept his distance from the hardest expressions of identitarian and nationalist politics represented by his colleagues.

For the far right, the difference between influence and control is ministries. Ministries, European negotiations, diplomatic channels and public money give nationalist politics reach that conferences and media cannot replicate. Orbán mattered because, for years, he offered all of it from inside an EU member state. Without his prime minister’s office. the coalition loses something no think tank or conference can replace: direct control over an EU member state.

An urgent question follows: where does governing power actually reside now for Patriots for Europe—and everything attached to it?

The search, by this logic, leads to Prague.

The shift is described as being driven by Tünde Bartha. the head of the Government Office and the “most powerful woman in the Czech Republic. ” nicknamed by some commentators the Cardinal Richelieu of Czech politics. In 2024, Orbán awarded her a high state decoration. The report traces her role back to when she helped establish the Hungarian division of Agrofert in Hungary. Bartha is described as travelling with Babiš on working trips. inviting diplomats to the Government Office. and negotiating on behalf of Czechia herself.

Her good relations with the Hungarian conservative faction suggest the centre of power within the European far right may be moving to Czechia. Even though Babiš publicly stays on the margins. loyalty and history still keep the Czech–Hungarian axis intact in the Orbán era—so maintaining those relations remains important privately.

After Orbán’s fall, many European commentators bet instead on Robert Fico’s Slovakia. Fico regularly travels to Moscow and is said to have taken on a role previously played by Hungarian foreign minister Péter Szijjártó. after it was revealed that Szijjártó repeatedly shared details with his Russian counterpart about sensitive EU negotiations.

But Fico does not command great respect from other far-right politicians. His government has long been mired in coalition problems, and protests against him—however exhausting and ineffective—signal fragmentation. His governing party, SMER, is not affiliated to any group in the European Parliament, weakening his position.

In the background of all this power engineering sits the persistent “MAGA dilemma”—the role of the United States in post-communist politics where links to Russia often take the spotlight. Yet Donald Trump’s political circle matters to the Patriots because it provides an image of politics that resembles the success stories they have tried to import into Europe. Support for stricter border controls. deportations. and fossil fuels. combined with attacks on universities. independent media. cultural institutions. and the language of national pride. strongly appeals to the parties gathered in Patriots for Europe. Their economic policy toward Europe, by contrast, is downplayed.

Before the election. Orbán received open support from JD Vance and Donald Trump—support that went beyond keeping one leader in power. For the Trumpist camp. Orbán’s Hungary became a political base in Europe: a government inside the EU. surrounded by institutions. conferences. media outlets. and intellectual circles that helped spread national conservative narratives and culture war themes across borders. Orbán’s defeat. then. weakens a key channel through which Trumpist politics can reach far-right parties and disillusioned parts of European society.

The so-called sovereignists—described as those who kick the European Union in the shins while routinely feeding off its money and infrastructure—find themselves trapped in a paradox. The report frames the answer to the politics of both the United States and Moscow as not strengthening nation states. but the greatest possible European integration. Trump also intends to demand a strict overview of how much individual EU member states contribute from their budgets to defence. Czechia. at least. has plenty to answer for. and the difference with fellow Patriots is underlined by a key point: unlike others. Babiš has no one to hide behind.

Orbán’s defeat has sent a tremor through the European far right. Patriots for Europe’s MEPs are aware of it, and one of them referred to “the end of an era.” The unresolved question is what will happen to identitarian politics more broadly.

National-conservative, xenophobic politics have not disappeared. Since the so-called refugee crisis, they have shifted the boundary of what counts as normal and acceptable political speech. With an army of influencers tied to Generation Identity. positions that would once have been strongly condemned have been smuggled into politics and public discourse. Far-right politics used to provoke broad rejection and outrage; the EU’s response to Austria’s conservative ÖVP chancellor Wolfang Schüssel forming a coalition with Jörg Haider’s far-right FPÖ in 2000 is cited as an example. With the rise of a less vulgar and more polished political elite, former standards have been blurred.

In today’s framing, the normalization looks different: post-fascists do not wear heavy combat boots or SS tattoos. Many have studied at prestigious universities and belonged to youth organizations attached to the parliamentary parties represented in Patriots for Europe. Orbán was one driving force of that normalization, but not the only one. Marine Le Pen and National Rally pursued “dédiabolisation. ” stripping the party of its extremist image to make far-right politics appear acceptable to mainstream voters. Orbán showed how this politics could govern from inside an EU member state. Le Pen showed how it could be softened rhetorically without abandoning its nationalist core.

Even if Orbán’s defeat matters for power and symbolism, the report argues that a single election will not shake a robust and sophisticated system. Patriots and the political infrastructure built around them will not disappear.

The youth organizations are described as having highly problematic pasts. often tied to controversies around legitimizing far-right narratives and. in many cases. openly neo-Nazi ones. Their centre of gravity is said to lie somewhat outside traditional party politics. Instead. these organizations rely on a new wave of influencers attracting young people—while the report says Europe’s faltering left or liberals do not have an equivalent.

That imbalance is treated as an impending cost.

Orbánism, the report continues, has built something bigger than Hungary. In large parts of society. especially among people hit hard by successive crises. there is an impression that interests are defended mainly by the far right. Orbán’s government is described as demonstrating whom such regimes serve: their own power class. connected business. and political families turning the state into money. contracts. and loyalty.

This politics draws strength from people disillusioned with global capitalism, who keep paying for economic, cultural and social inequalities. The far right appears to take their anger seriously. but in reality it redirects it—toward migrants. LGBTQIA+ people. women. poor people. NGOs. the independent media. or anyone else cast as an enemy.

The hole left behind by Orbán at the centre of national-conservative power is described as small compared with the gulf of inequality opening over decades between classes in European countries. If further social groups and generations grow up under those conditions. and if democratic politics does not find an answer. the lasting legacy is said to be the drift of disadvantaged people toward the far right—despite this politics actively pitting people against each other even when they stand close on the economic ladder.

Competing with the global far right, the report ends, means offering an alternative that is emancipatory rather than exclusionary. Only then can it be honestly said that Orbánism is behind them.

Viktor Orbán Patriots for Europe European far right Andrej Babiš CPAC Hungary 2026 Tünde Bartha Donald Trump Geert Wilders Marine Le Pen Matteo Salvini Herbert Kickl culture war EU funding freeze rule of law migration policy Green Deal culture war politics