No EU national leader reigns supreme in the way that Viktor Orban is lord and master of Hungary. Having tasted power as prime minister from 1998 to 2002, he reclaimed office in 2010 after a landslide election victory. Over the past seven years, he has cocked a snook at the EU and systematically dismantled the checks and balances built into Hungary’s political system after the end of communism in 1989.
It is scarcely imaginable that Mr Orban, 54, will lose next year’s parliamentary elections. The opposition is divided and demoralised. In any case, Mr Orban amended the electoral law in 2012 in a manner blatantly favourable to his ruling Fidesz party. This secured Fidesz an overwhelming majority of seats in the 2014 elections and will surely produce much the same outcome in 2018.
As Paul Lendvai observes in Orban: Europe’s New Strongman, his thoughtful, entertaining biography, Hungarian political scientists wrestle over how to define Mr Orban’s proudly illiberal regime.