Outgoing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban plans to also give up his seat in parliament after a being soundly defeated in a landslide reelection loss, he announced Saturday.
The right-wing populist suffered a “painful” defeat on April 12, that ended the Trump administration ally’s 16-year grip on the nation from Budapest.
He will instead focus on rebuilding his nationalist-populist party Fidesz, he said in Hungarian in the video address on X.
“I am now needed not in parliament, but in the reorganization of the patriotic movement.”
Orban plans to seek reelection as leader of his Fidesz party in a vote scheduled for June.
During his time in office, Orban was a favorite among certain factions of the American right, and became a frequent visitor to Mar-a-Lago.
When he was trailing in the polls, Vice President JD Vance even spent two days in Hungary to campaign for Orban — pulling out his cellphone at a rally to call President Trump, only to be sent to voicemail before getting the commander-in-chief on the second attempt.
But it wasn’t enough — as voters overwhelmingly backed Orban’s center-right challenger, Peter Magyar.
Magyar, who is due to be sworn in on May 9, scored a supermajority after campaigning on promises to end corruption and restore the democratic institutions that had been eroded under Orban’s rule.
Orban, who was first elected in 2010, had been the European Union’s longest-serving leader and a key western ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin — often accused of acting on the Kremlin’s behalf within the EU.
