Eyes are on Péter Magyar, Hungary’s prime minister, who’s Tisza party claimed a commanding parliamentary election victory in April, riding on promises of fundamental changes from the past 16 years, when Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party ruled the country with a supermajority. Now the table has turned. It is Magyar’s Tisza which oversees a supermajority in Hungary’s parliament, giving it far-reaching powers in every area of law-making.

Magyar’s promises included unveiling and investigating any wrongdoing perpetrated by members of the previous government, who could avoid litigation because of their parliamentary mandate, and the immunity it entails.

Miklós Seszták, national development minister from 2014 to 2018 is under investigation for allegedly pocketing around €32mn in a case involving the national bus carrier Volán, while the culture minister of the previous government, Balázs Hankó had his signature on €46mn of financial backing for artists close to Fidesz, allegedly financing the party's campaign before the election. They were not the first to be investigated: mayors, bussinessmen and others have been arrested in the previous months. Besides these two, now incarcerated, Fidesz ministers, Magyar was the third to have his political immunity revoked.

Magyar, then a member of the European Parliament, famously got into an altercation in a nightclub with a man in June of 2024, took the phone he was recording with, and threw it in the Danube. The prime minister is now joking with the fact that the establishment actually sent professional divers to find the device, just to incriminate him in a weightless incident. (Even more weightless due to the fact that the divers found the phone which still works.)

This was not the first time Fidesz wanted Magyar's immunity suspended: the party initiated that at the European Parliament, without success. But this time even Magyar argued for revoking his own immunity, which his parliamentary majority approved, and also raised the idea that immunity for parliamentarians should be abolished altogether, if there is grounds for suspicion of a criminal case.

After the two former ministers were arrested last Monday, Viktor Orbán absented himself to hang out at a football match in Belfast, as members of the former governing party saw the arrests as targeted political retribution. Fidesz went so far as to file a public complaint at the European Commission to that effect.

Magyar and many others were quick to mock the fact that Orbán’s party is seeking support from the institution they spent many years and public money, lambasting for political gain.  And Orbán, who is now again active on the political stage after a hiatus, is still riding on the message, that Magyar’s government is only there as a placeholder, Brussels dictating actual governance.

Anyway, Hungary’s allies seem to like Magyar, after they grew to dislike Orbán. Advances in unlocking formerly blocked funding, revitalizing institutional cooperation and generally giving the image of being a better neighbour.

But this attitude is not enough to stop energy prices rising, increasing the cost of every produce that ultimately reaches a Hungarian consumer. Magyar’s argument is that the previous government’s measures to quell price increases and take it out of the potential profit of the major multinational companies, is simply not sustainable. The voters seem to believe him: his and his party’s popularity is firm. And in a paradoxical way he can also profit from the ongoing investigation against him: the former ministers could end up in jail for years and he probably would pay some hundreds of euros in fine for stealing a phone.

The current investigations underway are aimed at crimes, sophisticated as they may be: theft. And there surely will be more: as a focus of his governance Magyar has even established an anti-corruption prosecution agency called National Asset Recovery and Protection Office (NVVH) and its president, Anna Unger is already talking about a case involving Orbán's own brother.

Depending on political loyalties, the issue is how the opposition will handle these cases. Polls conducted show that extensive corruption that became a given under Orbán’s governance led to the price being paid by his party. According to a poll published on October 5 even one third of Fidesz's supporters are satisfied where the anti-corruption investigations stand at this point.