For more than a decade, Viktor Orbán’s “illiberal” rule in Hungary has seemed ironclad. But recent European elections have shown that the Hungarian prime minister and his right-hand man are struggling to contain an unlikely challenger from within.
Antal Rogán, who has been by the premier’s side for three decades and is dubbed his “Cardinal Richelieu” by opponents, is currently in charge of the government’s media strategy. His wide-ranging ministerial portfolio includes secret services and checks on foreign funding received by opposition politicians, independent outlets and rights groups.
In his first interview with international media, Rogán sought to downplay his party’s setback in the European parliament vote, in which the ruling Fidesz party received 45 per cent, its lowest vote share since Hungary joined the EU in 2004.
“You can’t always be in a winning position in government,” Rogán told the Financial Times. “Very often someone else communicates more powerfully.”
Rogán was referring to a former Fidesz member-turned-rival, Péter Magyar, who joined a small party called Tisza this year and propelled it to 30 per cent at the ballot boxes, a first indication that the Orbán base is fracturing.
Magyar was never a prominent member of Fidesz, but his former wife Judit Varga was Orbán’s justice minister. They divorced in 2023. Magyar quit Fidesz this year on the day Varga was forced to resign as the party’s lead candidate for the European parliament amidst a child abuse scandal.
Rogán dismissed the idea that Magyar posed a serious challenge to Orbán. He expressed confidence that the prime minister, who is Europe’s longest-serving premier after taking office 14 years ago, would stay in power after the next general elections in 2026.
But Rogán himself, who is not as popular as the PM, could turn into a liability for Orbán. Magyar has accused the premier’s éminence grise of corruption and toxic disinformation campaigns, including about the west’s role in aiding Ukraine.
“This is Waterloo for Fidesz,” Magyar said after the EU election results came out on June 9. “All the billions wasted on propaganda, the war psychosis that the prime minister tried to build with Antal Rogán . . . this is the beginning of the end for Fidesz.”
Magyar, 43, told the FT that he would not pull any punches with Rogán, who “lost his appeal as a politician” and “is unaccountable . . . a Richelieu”, in reference to the 17th-century political mastermind who served as chief minister to Louis XIII, king of France.
Little known outside Hungary, Rogán has stayed out of the limelight, running what he calls the “government back office”. But he has gradually amassed power in the media and public administration, influencing sectors such as banking and information technology.
His National Information Centre, an umbrella organisation for intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies, was founded in 2022. Rogán’s secret services could also feed an investigation into foreign funding allegedly received by Magyar, which Rogán described as “a question that must be answered soon”. Magyar has called the probe a joke.
“Secret services are politicised and subjugated to propaganda,” said Márta Pardavi, co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a rights group, calling the practice “outrageous”.
An economist by training, the 52-year-old Rogán defended the National Information Centre’s work and said reorganisation of the Hungarian intelligence services had been prompted by the war in neighbouring Ukraine. “The prime minister wanted more direct control over them and reintegrated intelligence and counter-intelligence,” he said.
Rogán denied the corruption allegations Magyar and others had levelled against him, noting that no charges stuck in court. He also disputed being shielded of prosecution under Orbán. “Nobody is indispensable in this government,” he said, “not even me.”
Despite the bruising EU election result, Orbán has stood by his longtime ally. “Rogán has an uncanny ability to make others depend on him, and Orbán is no exception,” said a person familiar with the situation. “He is convinced replacing Rogán would be like shooting himself in . . . both feet.”
Another person who knows Rogán well said that the Richelieu parallel was “spot on” as the Hungarian minister had amassed power and wealth by making himself indispensable to Orbán.
Rogán rejected the Richelieu comparison because the French minister was a mentor to the king, whereas he is nine years younger than Orbán. “I saw a man who could renew conservative politics, and he did,” Rogán said of his first meeting with Orbán in the early 1990s.
Rogán grew up near Hungary’s western border with Slovenia in a Slovenian-speaking family. Described by peers as sharp, bookish and intensely political, he became chief domestic political adviser when Orbán first won the premiership in 1998.
After spending a few years as a Budapest district mayor, Rogán returned to parliament in 2010 to lead the Fidesz majority. Among the first bills he drew up was a media law as one of the initial steps towards Orbán’s illiberal state — and which set Budapest on a collision course with the EU.
The government was alleged to have allocated €3.5bn to public events and communications since Rogán became propaganda minister in 2015, according to local media outlet G7. “It is a money pump,” said Gábor Polyák, chair of media studies at Budapest’s Eötvös Loránd University. “A completely opaque system of random sums spent with dubious efficiency.”
Rogán said the ministry had struck tenders worth only €1.8bn on communications and events, including major international sporting events— an amount that, over nine years, was “defensible when we compare it to our predecessors’ spending”.
Magyar’s success is in part due to the fallout from a child sex abuse scandal in a village next to Orbán’s hometown — and the failure of Rogán’s propaganda machine in attempting to sweep the affair under the carpet.
“This is the deepest crisis Fidesz has yet faced,” one person with knowledge of the events said. “And the same goes for Rogán.”
Magyar said Rogán would be one of his early targets if he won power in 2026 and, on the campaign trail, suggested that the Orbán aide “find a country with no extradition treaty with Hungary”.
Rogán declined to discuss the child sex abuse scandal but acknowledged that his political career was tied to Orbán’s tenure.
“I will be in the political field as long as Viktor Orbán is the prime minister,” he said.
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