Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance is a political party in Hungary led by Viktor Orbán. It is most notable for dominating Hungarian politics from 2010 to 2026, a period known as the Orbán era. Earlier, from 1998 to 2002, it was the senior partner in a conservative coalition government. Founded as a classical liberal party, Fidesz gradually moved to the right and is presently considered a right-wing or far-right party with national conservative, Christian nationalist, right-wing populist, authoritarian, Eurosceptic, and illiberal views.
Fidesz was established in 1988 as the Alliance of Young Democrats (, shortened to Fidesz), a center-left and liberal activist student movement opposed to state communism. During Hungary's transition to multiparty democracy () in 1989-90, the movement became a political party and entered the National Assembly with Orbán at its helm after the 1990 election. Fidesz emerged as the largest parliamentary party after the 1998 election. During this period, it adopted nationalism and saw its popularity stagnate due to corruption scandals. While in opposition between 2002 and 2010, Fidesz formed an electoral alliance with the Christian Democratic People's Party (KDNP), which would eventually become its satellite party.
After winning a parliamentary supermajority in the 2010 election, Fidesz pursued national-conservative, Christian-nationalist, and Eurosceptic policies. Using its supermajority, it promulgated a new constitution, the Fundamental Law, in 2011, which further consolidated its power. In the following decade, Hungary experienced democratic backsliding as Fidesz developed a governance strategy of clientelism and institutional capture called the "System of National Cooperation" ( or NER). Despite popular dissatisfaction with NER corruption, Fidesz won supermajority victories in the 2014, 2018, and 2022 parliamentary elections while adopting new themes, including anti-immigrant rhetoric during the 2015 migrant crisis and Russophilic rhetoric after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Fidesz lost the 2026 election to the center-right Tisza Party.
Fidesz currently enjoys majorities in all 19 county assemblies and endorsed every successful presidential candidate from 2000 to 2024. It is in opposition in the National Assembly and the General Assembly of Budapest. Reflecting its shifting political position, Fidesz was, until 2000, a member of the Liberal International; from 2000 to 2021, of the center-right European People's Party; and from 2024 onwards, of Patriots for Europe, a right-wing populist formation it founded with ANO 2011 and the Freedom Party of Austria. Fidesz's governance and political communication strategies have exercised a strong influence on right-wing European politics and on conservatism in the United States, especially after the Republican Party's shift toward Trumpism in the late 2010s.
History
1988–1989: Liberal activist beginnings
The party was founded in the spring of 1988 and named Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége (Alliance of Young Democrats), with the acronym FIDESZ. It grew out of an underground liberal student activist movement opposed to the ruling Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party. Founding such a movement was semi-illegal at the time, so the founders risked their careers by being involved in the opposition. The membership had an upper age limit of 35 years (this requirement was abolished at the 1993 party congress).
In 1989, Fidesz won the Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize. The movement was represented at the award ceremony by one of its leaders, Péter Molnár, who later became a Member of Parliament in Hungary.
1990–1998: Centre-left opposition and conservative turn In the 1990 elections, the party entered the National Assembly after winning about 6% of the vote. They became a small, though quite popular oppositional party. In 1992, Fidesz joined the Liberal International. At the time, it was a moderate liberal centrist party, sometimes also described as social-liberal. By April 1993, Fidesz had "consistently led opinion polls for the past two years".
At the party congress that year, it changed its political position from liberal to civic-centrist ("polgári centrumpárt"). The turn in ideology caused a severe split in the membership. Péter Molnár left the party along with Gábor Fodor and Klára Ungár, who joined the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats. Viktor Orbán was elected party chairman.
After its disappointing result in the 1994 elections, Fidesz remained an opposition party but grew increasingly conservative. In 1995, it changed its name to Hungarian Civic Party (Magyar Polgári Párt) and sought connections to the national-conservative Hungarian Democratic Forum, a former governing party.
1998–2002: First Orbán government Fidesz gained power for the first time at the 1998 elections, with Viktor Orbán becoming prime minister. Their coalition partners were the smaller Hungarian Democratic Forum and the Independent Smallholders' Party. In 2000, Fidesz terminated its membership in the Liberal International and joined the European People's Party. The first Fidesz-led government was reckoned as a "relatively conventional European conservative" government.
2002–2010: Return to opposition
Fidesz narrowly lost the 2002 elections to the Hungarian Socialist Party, garnering 41.07% to the Socialists' 42.05%. Fidesz had 169 members of the National Assembly, out of a total of 386. Immediately after the election, they accused the opponents of electoral fraud. The 2002 Hungarian municipal elections saw again huge Fidesz losses.
In the spring of 2003, Fidesz took its current name, Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Union.
It was the most successful party in the 2004 European Parliamentary Elections: it won 47.4% of the vote and 12 of its candidates were elected as Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), including Lívia Járóka, the second Romani MEP.
Fidesz's nominee, Dr. László Sólyom, was elected President of Hungary in the 2005 election. He was endorsed by Védegylet, an NGO including people from the whole political spectrum. A self-described "conservative liberal," he championed elements of both political wings with a selective, but conscious choice of values. Sólyom politikaformáló erő akar lenni, Kern Tamás, Index.hu, 22 August 2005
In 2005, Fidesz and the Christian Democratic People's Party (KDNP) formed an alliance for the 2006 elections, which were won by the social-democratic and liberal coalition of Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) and the Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ). Fidesz received 42% of the list votes and 164 of 386 representatives in the National Assembly.
On 1 October 2006, Fidesz won the municipal elections, which counterbalanced the MSZP-led government's power to some extent. Fidesz won 15 of 23 mayoralties in Hungary's largest cities—although its candidate narrowly lost the city of Budapest to a member of the SZDSZ—and majorities in 18 out of 20 regional assemblies.
In the 2009 European Parliament election, Fidesz won a landslide victory, gaining 56.36% of the vote and 14 of Hungary's 22 seats.
In a closed-door party meeting in 2009, Orbán called for a "central political forcefield" to govern Hungary for up to 20 years to achieve political stability.
In January 2010, László Kövér, head of the party's national board, told reporters the party was aiming at winning a two-thirds majority at the parliamentary elections in April. He noted that Fidesz had a realistic chance to win a landslide. However, this feat was threatened by the rise of the radical nationalist Jobbik party. Kövér said it was a "lamentably negative" tendency, adding that it was rooted in the "disaster government" of the Socialist Party and its former liberal ally Free Democrats.
2010–2026: In power The strong and preeminent Fidesz has benefited from the fragmented and disjointed opposition that proved inept at mounting a unified challenge to the ruling party in a country where a majority of parliamentary seats are allocated to the party that garners the plurality of votes in a constituency.
Government debt fell by 6% in the 8 years after Fidesz took power in 2010 while the country's credit ratings improved. Economic growth almost quadrupled with wages rising by over 10% and destitution decreasing by almost 50% (though still considerable). According to official figures, unemployment had fallen by nearly two-thirds. However, as many as almost half of newly employed Hungarians found work elsewhere in the EU. A public works program has also been criticized by some economists for artificially and deceptively reducing unemployment numbers while engaging in and compensating people for possibly unneeded or unnecessarily inefficient work. Hungary has been highly dependent on EU funds during Fidesz's rule; these representing nearly 4% of the country's GDP, more than for any other EU member.
2010–2014: Second Orbán government In a landslide victory in the 2010 parliamentary elections, the party won an outright majority in the first round on 11 April, with the Fidesz-KDNP alliance winning 206 seats, including 119 individual seats. In the final result, Fidesz 263 seats, of which 173 are individual seats. Fidesz held 227 of these seats, giving it an outright majority in the National Assembly by itself.
Fidesz was widely seen as propelled to a sweeping victory in large part due to the dissatisfaction with the ruling political establishment which was plagued by corruption scandals and by the 2008 financial crisis. The socialist government had also imposed harsh austerity measures in an attempt to rein in its ballooning budget deficits even before the late 2000s’ crisis. In September 2006, a recording of the prime minister admitting to lying about the country's dire economic prospects was revealed by the media and broadcast on radio. Steel barriers were erected around the parliament to protect it from tens of thousands of protesters.
After winning 53% of the popular vote in the first round of the 2010 parliamentary election, which translated into a supermajority of 68% of parliamentary seats, giving Fidesz sufficient power to revise or replace the constitution, the party embarked on an extraordinary project of passing over 200 laws and drafting and adopting a new constitution—since followed by nearly 2000 amendments.
The new constitution has been widely criticized by the European Commission for Democracy through Law, the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and the United States for concentrating too much power in the hands of the ruling party, for limiting oversight of the new constitution by the Constitutional Court of Hungary, and for removing democratic checks and balances in various areas, including the ordinary judiciary,. . supervision of elections, and the media.
In October 2013, Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe said that the council was satisfied with the amendments which had been made to the criticized laws.
2014–2018: Third Orbán government Fidesz won the nationwide parliamentary election in April 2014 and secured a second supermajority with 133 seats (of 199) in the legislature. Observers from The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe stated that Fidesz "enjoyed an undue advantage, including in biased media coverage.”
This supermajority was lost, however, when Tibor Navracsics was appointed to the European Commission. His Veszprém County seat was taken by an independent candidate in a by-election. Another by-election on 12 April 2015 saw the supermajority lose a second seat, also in Veszprém, to a Jobbik candidate.
2018–2022: Fourth Orbán government Fidesz won the nationwide parliamentary election in April 2018 and secured a 3rd supermajority with 133 seats (of 199) in the legislature. Orbán and Fidesz campaigned primarily on the issues of immigration and foreign meddling, and the election was seen as a victory for right-wing populism in Europe.