In a joyful Budapest, I see the chance of an unprecedented transition | Timothy Garton Ash

With the ejection of Trumpian hero Viktor Orbán, Hungarians demanded a restored democracy.

Now, Europe must support them

To be in Budapest last Sunday evening was to see history again being made on the Danube.

As https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2026/apr/13/thousands-celebrate-hungary-peter-magyar-viktor-orban-16-year-rule-video">rapturous crowds gathered on the riverbank opposite the brightly illuminated parliament building, chanting “Ria-ria Hungaria!” and “Hungary-Europe!”, we all knew that the implications of the dramatic election victory for the Tisza party of Péter Magyar go far beyond this one central European country.

The result is very good news for Ukraine and the European Union.

It’s correspondingly bad news for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and the US president, Donald Trump, those twin backers of Viktor Orbán’s regime.

The critical question now is whether Hungary can be the first country in the world to emerge from such a far-reaching populist erosion of democracy – the “Orbánisation” Trump is trying to emulate in the US – and whether Europe has the political will and imagination to enable it to succeed.

Already on Friday evening, standing amid a huge crowd of young people at a “system-changer” concert on Heroes’ Square, I felt the energy for change.

In the very square where, back in 1989, I watched a fiery young student leader named Viktor Orbán call for the end of the weary old communist regime and for the Russians to go home, I now saw a new generation of Hungarians calling for the end of a weary old regime led by this same Orbán and his Fidesz party. “Filthy Fidesz!” they cried and, yes, “Russians go home!” For everyone knows that today’s Orbán is Putin’s man in Brussels.

Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist.

His book https://atlantic-books.co.uk/book/the-magic-lantern/">The Magic Lantern contains an eyewitness account of the young Orbán’s 1989 appearance in Heroes’ Square