But Magyar has made other statements that have alarmed many people, raising questions about whether there really are grounds for such optimism.

The new Hungarian leader has also made a number of critical remarks about Ukraine’s policy regarding the Hungarian minority in Zakarpattia (Transcarpathia). Moreover, in a breach of diplomatic protocol, he has "initiated" a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Berehove, leading some to speculate whether this could imply that he considers the city to be Hungarian territory.

Following these statements, many in Ukraine began to wonder: are we dealing with a new Viktor Orbán in Budapest, albeit one in a more democratic guise?

Will we face a new ultimatum that could block our progress to EU membership?

And should Ukraine make concessions accordingly?

European Pravda has reconstructed the sequence of events that took place before and after this much-talked-about statement, and we can say with confidence: 

there is no cause for alarm.

Despite Magyar’s aggressive rhetoric, this particular statement of his is positive for Ukraine. However, as is often the case in Hungarian politics, a lot was being said "between the lines".

The fact that Magyar made this statement after meeting the mayor of Berehove is an extremely good sign. Magyar’s list of demands gives further reason for optimism. The expectations of Ukraine on the list do not pose any real problems, and the most problematic part of Viktor Orbán's demands has been removed.

Ukraine has a proposal for Budapest that primarily benefits the Hungarian community in Zakarpattia. The community itself has also let Magyar know that it is finally time to reconcile with Ukraine. Ultimately, the new Hungarian leader will have to take Brussels' position into account. So the statements about resetting the relationship have solid grounds.

In this article, we explain what’s currently happening in Hungarian politics regarding Ukraine and how to act in order not to miss this opportunity.

No, Magyar is not laying claim to Berehove

Péter Magyar’s statement came out on Tuesday evening. The new Hungarian leader published his first extensive post on Ukraine after meeting with the mayor of Berehove, Zoltán Babják, who travelled to Budapest specifically for the meeting.

There are positive elements for Kyiv here, as well as some negative ones which have caused confusion or even outrage among many people in Ukraine. Let’s focus on those first.

First of all, many were surprised by the wording, in that Magyar himself appeared to be inviting Volodymyr Zelenskyy to a meeting. "I am initiating a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in early June, symbolically in Berehove, a Hungarian-majority town," he wrote.

This is clearly not how meetings between state leaders are supposed to be arranged, as even European Pravda's Hungarian sources acknowledge. In personal relationships, especially between friends, there is no issue with "inviting oneself over", but in relations between countries, the invitation should come from the host country.

So why did Magyar post this statement?

The explanation is obvious to anyone who follows the Hungarian leader's media activity. This may sound unusual to Ukrainians, but it’s true: Magyar still writes his own posts and comments, and at times his improvisations drive his international and media teams up the wall.

More importantly, there are no grounds whatsoever to claim that Hungary's new leader is questioning Ukraine's sovereignty over Berehove or anything like that.

Magyar avoided using the word "invite" (since he can only invite someone to Hungary, not to Ukraine). And in the final sentence of his post – probably not everyone read that far – he makes it clear that he is waiting for an invitation from the Ukrainian authorities: "I hope to soon be able to accept his [the mayor’s] kind invitation to Berehove. I am ready."

Overall, the tone of Magyar’s post is rather positive.

The main message is: the Ukrainian-Hungarian conflict of the Orbán era must end.

"It is in the interest of Hungarians living in Transcarpathia to place Hungarian-Ukrainian relations on new foundations," he says, adding that this was the outcome of his conversation with Zoltán Babják.

"The aim of the meeting [with the mayor of Berehove] is to improve the situation of Hungarians in Transcarpathia and to support their ability to remain in their homeland." According to Magyar, if Ukraine resolves the issues that Hungarians face, then "we can certainly open a new chapter in Ukrainian-Hungarian bilateral relations".

Now it’s time to move on to the "price to pay" – what exactly Magyar expects the Ukrainian authorities to do.

No, these are not Szijjártó’s "11 points": the most toxic elements are gone

"The concessions announced by the Ukrainian government in 2025 in the field of education are a step in the right direction, but they are not sufficient." Magyar’s wording here came as a surprise to many (did the government really announce something specifically for 2025?).

Magyar also provided specific details in his post – a list of the problems that supposedly need to be addressed. But this list is even more puzzling.

Neither the author of this article nor European Pravda's sources have been able to determine its origin. One of the most interesting (and possibly realistic) explanations that’s been suggested is that the list may have been generated by AI in response to a prompt such as "Please list the language-related problems experienced by Hungarians in Zakarpattia". This could explain the inaccuracies in it (which might just be AI hallucinations).

"Higher education in Ukraine remains monolingual," Magyar claims in the first point on the list of issues he wants resolved.

But this is simply not true. There is a fully Hungarian-language institution in Berehove – Ferenc Rákóczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian College of Higher Education – and in Uzhhorod, there is a Hungarian institute within the state-run national university where instruction in Hungarian is available.

"Final examinations [when leaving school] are conducted in Ukrainian," the second point on Magyar’s list says – and again, this is not true. Hungarian children in Zakarpattia can take the National Multi-Subject Test (NMT) in Hungarian if they wish. It is true that the issue of the old external independent assessment (ZNO, for admission to universities in Ukraine) remains unresolved (although it is not being conducted under martial law anyway), but according to European Pravda sources, this is not a red line for the Ukrainian government.

This is only a partial list of the inaccurate claims in the post.

Even more importantly, all the points where Magyar was referring to actual demands of the Hungarian minority in Zakarpattia are ones that Ukraine is willing to address. European Pravda has reported several times that the government even has a package of proposals ready. Some of these ideas were approved at a working level between Kyiv and Budapest back in 2024, but Viktor Orbán set a political goal of blocking Ukraine’s path to EU membership, and last year all discussions were halted.

Now these ideas may get a new lease of life. They include clearer regulations for schools with Hungarian-language classes, as well as formalised rights for Hungarians in Ukraine to address local authorities in their native language in areas where there are Hungarian communities, and more. These are precisely the points that Magyar listed.

Even more important, however, is what Hungary’s new leader did not mention.

Back in January 2024, Hungary’s then foreign minister Péter Szijjártó (who is now known to have followed instructions from his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov) handed Ukraine a list of 11 demands.

Some of them can realistically be resolved and would benefit Ukrainian citizens of Hungarian origin.

But other points were totally unacceptable from the outset. They had nothing to do with language or education rights, and it’s widely believed they were included simply to provoke a refusal from Ukraine and shift the blame onto Kyiv.

For example, Orbán’s government demanded that Ukraine change its electoral system and guarantee representation for Hungarians in parliament. This would require amendments to the Constitution and a nationwide referendum – effectively impossible even after the war is over.

Magyar did not even allude to these absurd political demands, which is another indication that he is inclined towards a constructive approach. And there are further, more tangible signs of this as well.

A message for Zakarpattia’s "Orbán-era elite"

We’ve mentioned how significant it is that the mayor of Berehove, Zoltán Babják, was the one who travelled to Budapest to meet Péter Magyar.

Babják is considered one of the most pragmatic leaders of the Hungarian community in Ukraine – and there are good reasons for that.

In 2023, when Viktor Orbán was blocking the political decision to open EU accession negotiations with Ukraine, it was Babják who wrote an open letter to him, explaining that this decision was important for the Hungarian community. Orbán initially refused to consider Babják’s request, but eventually he was forced to "step out for coffee" during the EU summit, allowing the decision on opening the negotiations to go through.

Babják has also visited the front line and is said to be the only Hungarian community leader who has been to positions near the line of contact.

Incidentally, the way Magyar phrased his post led many to believe that Babják had personally conveyed the list of problems faced by Hungarians. But this seems unlikely: the head of Berehove's community could hardly be unaware of the existence of a Hungarian-language college in his own city.

This issue is not just about personalities.

For Péter Magyar, caring about Hungarians abroad is not political opportunism, but part of his convictions and ideology. Because Hungary’s complex history has left large parts of the Hungarian people outside its borders, this is a widespread view, especially among politicians.

In the weeks following his election, Magyar met with representatives of Hungarian minorities in Romania, Serbia and Slovakia, each time inviting the political leaders of those communities to the meeting – even those who had worked with Orbán for years.

For example, in Romania he invited Hunor Kelemen, even though Kelemen is considered by some to have been involved in vote manipulation in Orbán’s favour. As European Pravda reported, during their meeting Magyar proposed leaving the past behind and starting again with a clean slate for the benefit of Hungarians in Romania.

This was the approach that Orbán's allies in Zakarpattia had expected.

There is essentially one major organisation representing ethnic Hungarians in the region – the Hungarian Cultural Association of Transcarpathia (KMKSZ), which for years has been led by László Brenzovics (rumour has it that he and Orbán are godfathers to each other's children). Brenzovics leads from abroad, having left Ukraine in 2024 due to the risk of prosecution by the Security Service of Ukraine after a search was conducted at his office during a period of heightened Ukrainian-Hungarian tensions.

European Pravda sources say that after Magyar’s election victory, the KMKSZ initially considered changing its leader and had even identified a possible replacement. However, when the new Hungarian leader signalled his readiness to reconcile with various minority leaders abroad, Brenzovics was re-elected as head of the KMKSZ on 18 April.

There is little doubt that the KMKSZ leadership offered Péter Magyar a meeting.

That would have been the worst possible scenario for Ukraine.

Unfortunately, there are some people within the leadership of this organisation who have grown accustomed to divvying up Hungarian funding, living off kickbacks, and increasing their influence by fuelling hostility towards Kyiv.

The fact that Péter Magyar chose not to engage with them and instead met with the constructive Zoltán Babják is perhaps the clearest indication that Hungary’s new leader is serious about resolving issues with Ukraine.

Waiting in Kyiv, waiting in Brussels

Another highly positive signal, this time from Kyiv, is that Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his team decided not to respond to Magyar’s inaccurate or awkward statements. (The Orbán years showed that Zelenskyy is quite capable of responding sharply to Hungary when necessary.)

Now, on the contrary, there is a clear desire to finally end this conflict that benefits no one.

Ukraine is genuinely interested in opening a new chapter of good-neighbourly relations with Hungary and putting an end to the period of constant vetoes on its path to EU membership and beyond.

Of course, a single meeting between Magyar and Zelenskyy will not be enough.

Ukraine must be ready to act quickly, including at the parliamentary level.

Since the elections, European Pravda has reported, citing sources in Magyar’s team, that the opening of EU negotiating clusters will only be possible after Kyiv has taken steps towards Budapest on minority issues. And that isn’t just because Magyar cares about this personally. For the new Hungarian leader, it’s also important to show Hungarian voters that he is not "Zelenskyy’s puppet", as Orbán’s election campaign propaganda claimed.

Fortunately, Ukraine has the support of the genuine leaders of the Hungarian community.

Zoltán Babják's statement in response to Magyar’s post, in which he emphasised that there is no repression of Hungarian rights in Ukraine, is further proof of this.

The venue of the future meeting between the leaders remains to be agreed upon. Zelenskyy will undoubtedly invite Magyar to Kyiv (he has been there before, when he brought humanitarian aid after the strike on the Okhmatdyt children's hospital). But a visit to Kyiv could be combined with a trip to Berehove (or Uzhhorod and Berehove).

Finally, there is another key player in this story that is on Ukraine’s side: the European Commission and its president, Ursula von der Leyen.

The day after his "Ukraine" statement, Péter Magyar flew to Brussels, where he met with Ursula von der Leyen and the president of the European Council, António Costa.

No details of the talks were disclosed, except that they discussed the Ukraine issue.

But Magyar’s main focus is elsewhere. His number one priority is restoring EU funding for Hungary that the European Commission froze during the Orbán era.

Brussels has now set 27 conditions that Budapest must meet to unlock the first tranches of funding. And, as is always the case in relations with the Commission, it is crucial that Brussels feels that the new Hungarian leadership is genuinely committed to cooperation.

For that to happen, Hungary must return to the European mainstream not only in words. One key element of that is realigning with common EU policies.

Given that Ukraine is currently the number one issue for the EU, Brussels expects Magyar to adjust Hungary’s Ukraine policy and is sending fairly clear signals to that effect.

Ultimately, there is every reason to expect that this shift in policy will become visible in practice.

Sergiy Sydorenko

Editor, European Pravda

Even with the United States still inside the alliance, its current posture could profoundly alter Europe’s security situation. Fewer American troops in Europe, weaker political commitments or a reduced US role in intelligence, logistics and other key support functions would already force Europeans to rethink how the continent is defended. 

Paris believes that a US withdrawal from Europe is no longer seen as a remote possibility. 

It is increasingly treated as a scenario for which Europe must prepare.

France is the European country best placed to lead adaptation to a smaller American role. It has the strategic culture, the nuclear deterrent, the expeditionary reflex and the political instinct to think at continental scale. 

But it still lacks the mass, the logistical ecosystem and the industrial depth to replace the United States as Europe’s military backbone. 

Russia’s war has made practical action more important than strategic talk.

What will matter in the coming years is not whether France looks strategically prepared on paper, but whether it can help build a European system fast enough to keep Ukraine armed, deter Russia and prevent the widening gap between a shrinking American role and Europe’s still limited readiness.

France at the centre of Europe’s defence debate

France is closer than any other EU country to being Europe’s strategic pivot.

It is the EU’s only nuclear power, one of the few states on the continent with a defence industrial base that still aspires to a real degree of sovereignty, and one of the rare European militaries that can think at once in terms of continental deterrence, expeditionary action and high intensity war. 

That does not make France sufficient. But at no doubt makes it necessary. 

If Europe has to adapt to a smaller American role, no credible answer can be built around Germany alone, Britain alone or the eastern flank alone. Any European answer to a thinner American role would have to be built with France. 

In Paris, dependence on Washington is not a new concern.

That conviction was formed in 1956, when NATO was recently created. 

At that time, the growing Suez crisis showed Paris that close alignment with Washington could still end in humiliation when American interests diverged.

The United States forced France and Britain to back down from their intervention in Egypt, leaving behind a lesson that shaped French strategic thinking for decades: alliance is useful, but dependence is dangerous. 

From there emerged the doctrine of autonomy, not as a fantasy of isolation, but as the refusal to build national security on the assumption that the United States would always see Europe’s interests as its own.

For years, many allies treated that reflex as a specifically French fixation. Now it increasingly looks like an early understanding of a problem the rest of Europe is only now being forced to confront.

Ukraine as a test for strategic autonomy

Europe would need far more than rhetoric to compensate for a weaker American role. According to a Bruegel and Kiel Institute estimate, it would need around 300,000 additional troops to deter Russian aggression without effective US backing, along with roughly €250 billion more in annual defence spending in the short term. In practical terms, that means around 50 new brigades.

Although that figure is deceptive. Three hundred thousand Europeans are not the same thing as 300,000 Americans. American power comes as a system: coherent command, strategic lift, intelligence, air and missile defence, refuelling, satellite linked and other strategic enablers, and the ability to move, coordinate and sustain forces at speed. Europe’s weakness lies there. 

The gap is not simply one of manpower or money. It is the gap between having soldiers on paper and being able to turn them into credible, integrated combat power in time. Rearmament is part of the answer, but not the whole of it.

The first real test of Europe’s adaptation to "less America reality" will not come at a summit table or in another speech about "strategic autonomy". 

It is playing out in Ukraine. 

If Europe wants to know whether it can carry more of its own security burden, the first question is simple: can it sustain Ukraine if Washington scales back? Over the past three years, Europe already allocated more aid to Ukraine per year than the United States, about €43.5 billion against €38 billion.

In purely fiscal terms, replacing the United States is possible, but replacing US military aid is much harder.

The United States has been a crucial supplier of heavy weapons and ammunition vital to Ukraine’s defence. To compensate for that, European countries would need to increase production quickly and on a broad scale. Europe’s defence industry already produces many of the systems Ukraine relies on, including howitzers, air defence systems, tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. But that is not enough to claim autonomy. 

The hardest capabilities to replace remain rocket artillery such as HIMARS, long range air defence such as Patriot, and some of the ammunition those systems require.

Europe still lacks a credible substitute at sufficient scale. That leaves European governments with a difficult choice: continue buying some systems from the United States where possible, look to external alternatives where they exist or accelerate investment in European ones.

Nuclear anchor

One illustration of that difficulty is the collapse of the Future Combat Air System, or FCAS. Launched in 2017 as the flagship Franco German project for European strategic autonomy, it was supposed to produce the next generation of combat air power while reducing long term dependence on US systems. Instead, it exposed the opposite problem. 

French and German requirements diverged, procurement cycles moved out of sync, and industrial rivalry proved stronger than political rhetoric. France wanted an aircraft compatible with its nuclear deterrent and carrier operations. Germany did not share those requirements and, having already bought US F-35s, they no longer faced the same urgency. Control over design, technology and workshare were also disputed. 

It has shown that strategic autonomy remains easier to declare than to produce, and also pointed to something more fundamental than industrial rivalry:

French air power requirements are shaped by nuclear doctrine. 

On 2 March, at Île Longue, Macron gave a speech that gave French deterrence a more openly European dimension. He said France now had to think about its deterrence strategy "in the depth of the European continent" and called for a progressively more "advanced deterrence".

While Russia is using nuclear intimidation more openly, and confidence in the American guarantee is weaker than before, and Paris wants one of the few strategic assets Europe controls itself to count for more in the balance. 

But Macron did not offer Europe a French version of the American umbrella.

His move is more serious than his critics admit and less revolutionary than some of his admirers suggest. 

What is under consideration is a limited but real package: more warheads, less transparency over the stockpile, the possible temporary deployment of nuclear capable Rafales on allied territory, more consultations and exercises with European partners, and tighter coordination on conventional enablers such as early warning, air and missile defence, and precision strike. 

What remains unchanged is just as important. 

Macron did not propose NATO style nuclear sharing. 

He did not offer allies a role in authorising use. The arsenal remains French, the doctrine remains French.

The final decision remains in Paris.

France is extending the political reach of its deterrent, not sharing control over it.

None of this removes the central weakness. Nuclear signalling can reinforce deterrence. It cannot compensate for conventional weakness. If Europe cannot deny Moscow a rapid gain on the ground, no refinement of French doctrine will solve the problem. The hard requirements remain the same: brigades, ammunition, mobility, command and the ability to fight early enough to make nuclear blackmail less useful.

NATO after Trump, France after Macron

Trump’s war exposed, in real time, how brittle the transatlantic relationship has become. European governments did not want this war. They were not officially properly consulted, they questioned both its legality and its strategic logic, and they had no desire to be dragged into another American-led escalation in the region. But they could not escape its consequences. 

It also showed, again, that the United States becomes not just a less predictable strategic actor – it can even end up in blackmailing its European Allies.

That is one more reason why the debate about Europe’s ability to act with less America became more acute this spring. 

All of that would be hardly possible to ignore at the forthcoming NATO leader’s meeting scheduled in July in Ankara.

The debate now stretches well beyond defence spending. It includes post-war stabilisation in the Middle East, maritime security after the Iran war, and the terms on which Europeans can assume a larger role without becoming the support structure for conflicts they neither chose nor control. 

If Ankara avoids those issues, it will say a great deal about NATO’s condition. 

But even if Macron has read the strategic direction correctly, there remains a second uncertainty, and it is French. 

Europe is being asked not only whether France has the right answer to a weaker American commitment, but whether France itself will remain on that line after 2027. 

Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally since 2022, is now widely seen as a plausible winner of the next presidential election which gives his defence positions immediate European significance.

He has reiterated his opposition to sending French troops to Ukraine, and the broader National Rally line is far less open to the wider European role Macron is trying to build for France, whether on Ukraine, deterrence or force posture. 

Marine Le Pen, former National Rally frontwoman, has already made clear that she would reverse Macron’s opening on the European dimension of French nuclear doctrine and has threatened to leave NATO’s integrated command. She is not the one who decides any more, but her successor’s position on this topic remains vague.

That gives France’s current line a built-in fragility.

Europe may need France to take on more in an era of weaker American commitment, but it cannot assume that the French position of 2026 will survive the election of 2027.

France is unlikely to replace the United States in Europe in any full sense. It does not have America’s scale, its enabling architecture, or its capacity to reassure the whole alliance at once. But that is not the only role that matters in the period now opening. 

France remains one of the few European powers able to combine military credibility with strategic initiative.

In an era of weaker American certainty, that combination gives Paris a role no other European capital can quite replicate: not that of a substitute for Washington, but of a state capable of pushing Europe towards a more coherent military and political posture.

Charlotte Guillou-Clerc,

Journalist (France)

With the end of Viktor Orbán’s era, the ability of leaders like him to obstruct collective decisions has diminished. That phase now appears to be drawing to a close. Although the political approach of Bulgaria’s next government remains to be seen, it does not carry the same track record of obstruction that defined Orbán’s Hungary.

The political path towards accession is becoming clearer.

But this does not make Ukraine’s membership more secure.

It changes the nature of the challenge.

The key question is no longer whether accession can be politically endorsed in the European Union. It is whether it can be made economically and socially sustainable – both for Ukraine and for existing member states.

If it cannot, the risk is not a formal rejection of Ukraine’s membership. The more likely scenario is a gradual process of delay, fragmentation and proceduralisation – an accession path that remains open in principle but becomes increasingly difficult to complete in practice. The experience of the Western Balkans shows how such dynamics can turn enlargement into a prolonged and uncertain process, eroding credibility on both sides.

For Ukraine, this is not an abstract institutional issue. The way integration is managed will shape patterns of growth, inequality and regional development for years to come.

EU integration has always created winners and losers.

In Ukraine’s case, the scale will be larger than in previous enlargements. Integration will reshape agriculture, industrial development, energy systems and regional economies. The long-term benefits are significant. But the short-term pressures will be uneven and, in many cases, politically sensitive.

This is where the current model of enlargement is weakest.

The EU still approaches accession as a sequence: rule adoption first, political decision later, economic adjustment afterwards. That approach is no longer adequate.

The economic consequences of integration are already visible – in both Ukraine and EU member states. Farmers, industrial producers and regional actors can see where pressures will emerge. Yet there is still no coordinated framework to manage these effects early.

This creates risks on both sides.

Within the EU, governments may delay or complicate accession because they lack tools to manage domestic adjustment. The result may not be a formal rejection, but a gradual slowing down of the process.

Within Ukraine, the risks are equally serious. If integration proceeds without managing its economic consequences, it may increase regional disparities and social inequalities. Over time, this can weaken support for integration itself and create space for political actors who mobilise economic grievances.

In other words, the challenge is shifting from politics to governance.

What matters now is whether integration is structured in a way that produces broadly shared benefits.

This requires a different approach.

Instead of treating accession, reconstruction, investment and sectoral integration as separate processes, they need to be connected. This points to the need for a dedicated coordination mechanism linking EU institutions, member states and Ukrainian actors during the accession process – an idea that has begun to emerge in recent policy discussions.

Integration has to be managed before accession, not after it.

In practical terms, this means aligning regulatory reforms, investment decisions and sectoral development strategies. It also means embedding Ukraine progressively into European supply chains, infrastructure networks and energy systems during the accession process.

The goal is not to eliminate the costs of integration. That is neither possible nor desirable. The goal is to make these costs manageable and to ensure that the benefits become visible early enough to sustain support.

This is particularly important for Ukraine.

The success of integration will depend not only on meeting formal criteria, but on whether it delivers tangible improvements across regions and sectors.

If integration creates visible opportunities – in industry, infrastructure, energy and regional development – it can strengthen support for the European path. If it does not, it risks becoming a source of tension.

This is why economic coordination is not a secondary issue. It is central to the success of accession.

Ukraine’s EU membership is no longer only a question of political will. It is a question of whether the process can be governed in a way that is balanced, predictable and broadly beneficial.

The window for making that happen is now.

by Laszlo Bruszt,
CEU Democracy Institute,

for European Pravda

Combining electoral dominance with the systematic weakening of institutional checks and balances, Orbán appeared to solve a central dilemma of modern authoritarianism: how to win repeatedly at the ballot box while hollowing out liberal democracy.

And because his model inspired admirers throughout the West (and beyond), helping to sustain a broader narrative of democratic decline, his humiliating election defeat carries implications far beyond Hungary.

The victory of Péter Magyar’s Tisza party, like the triumph of Poland’s Civic Coalition over the illiberal Law and Justice (PiS) party in 2023, represents not only a reversal of a seemingly consolidated system, but also signals that such regimes may be more fragile than they appear.

The lesson is not simply that illiberal regimes can lose.

It is that the very logic that sustains them can lead to their undoing.

Illiberal leaders have long justified their concentration of power by invoking the success of East Asia’s developmental states.

By weakening institutional constraints, they argued, governments could act decisively, coordinate investment, and deliver economic growth.

But this analogy was always misleading. The regimes of South Korea’s Park Chung-hee or Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew were effective not because they faced fewer constraints, but because they faced more pressure.

Geopolitical insecurity and the constant risk of domestic unrest forced them to deliver broad-based gains or risk collapse.

Reduced accountability did not produce complacency; it produced discipline.

More generally, effective state capacity depends on constraints that discipline those in power.

These can take different forms. In liberal democracies, constitutional checks and balances impose such discipline. In developmental autocracies, external and internal vulnerability provided it.

Contemporary illiberal regimes operate under very different conditions.

In the absence of pressures comparable to those faced by Park and Lee, the weakening of accountability does not generate developmental capacity. Instead, it creates opportunities for rent-seeking.

Power becomes a resource for maintaining political coalitions rather than for delivering public goods.

A supposed strategy for strengthening state capacity turns into a system of selective distribution.

Over time, this logic erodes the economic foundations of illiberal rule.

When political loyalty becomes the primary criterion for allocating resources, efficiency and innovation suffer. Public procurement rewards insiders, rather than the most productive firms.

Domestic entrepreneurs face corruption, uncertainty, and limited opportunities for expansion. At the same time, growth strategies based on foreign direct investment generate employment but often fail to produce upgrading or sustained productivity gains.

That is what happened to Hungary under Orbán. As economic performance weakened, so did the regime’s capacity to sustain its supporting coalition.

Slower growth narrowed the tax base and reduced the resources available for redistribution. Investment in education, health care, and social mobility stagnated. Hungarians increasingly experienced what had been presented as a system of stability as a system of closure.

Large segments of the workforce faced declining prospects, stagnating wages, and limited opportunities for advancement.

At the start of Orbán’s long reign, these internal dynamics were partly masked by financial transfers from the European Union.

But access to these resources became increasingly conditional on government transparency and judicial independence—precisely the forms of accountability Orbán resisted. The result was a self-imposed constraint:

by rejecting external oversight, the regime limited its own access to funding.

As such constraints tightened, it is no surprise that Orbán turned to even more illiberal partners, including Russia and China, trading regulatory autonomy for new forms of geopolitical dependence.

A project that began in the name of sovereignty risked ending in vulnerability.

More broadly, Orbán has shown that even highly captured systems can become politically exposed. The very mechanisms that sustained illiberal rule could, over time, turn into sources of fragility.

Hungary’s model relied on a tenuous coalition of multinational firms, politically connected domestic elites, and voters promised stability and economic improvement. But as growth slowed, tensions within this coalition intensified. Domestic businesses found fewer opportunities, while voters faced declining living standards and blocked futures.

Defeating Orbán became possible when discontent met organization — when a credible challenger united fragmented voters and turned frustration into participation.

Where traditional opposition forces were weak or discredited, this required leadership capable of transforming social grievances into a broad-based political movement that mobilized across class and institutional divides.

That is what Magyar and his Tisza party accomplished. For years, Hungary served as proof that democratic backsliding could be institutionalized and sustained within the framework of formal electoral competition.

Magyar’s decisive victory demonstrates something equally important: that such systems are not irreversible.

But Orbán’s defeat, like the defeat of Poland’s PiS three years ago, does not mark the end of illiberalism.

The structural conditions that fueled its rise — economic insecurity, social fragmentation, and political distrust — persist across many democracies. But Orbán’s fall does challenge the sense of inevitability that had surrounded the global drift away from liberal democracy.

Now, the more difficult task begins: dismantling entrenched patronage networks, restoring institutional autonomy, and rebuilding state capacity without reproducing the failures that enabled illiberalism in the first place.

Magyar will also need to redefine how national interests are pursued within the European Union — strengthening domestic constituencies while building transnational alliances capable of advancing deeper and more resilient forms of integration.

Defeating illiberalism at the ballot box was hard. Building a resilient form of liberal democracy in its aftermath — one capable of delivering both accountability and inclusion—might be even harder.

But one thing is certain: democracies, friends and foes alike, will be watching closely.

This article originally appeared on Project Syndicate and is republished with permission from the copyright holder.

The agreement was informally dubbed the "Kachka-Kos plan" after the officials who signed it – Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration Taras Kachka and European Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos.

But for the EU, it is much more than a declaration by the Ukrainian deputy prime minister.

Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos explained the logic behind the plan in an interview with European Pravda. "One of the reasons why we adopted this 10-point plan is to rebuild trust with the member states because of what happened on 22 July [when Ukraine undermined its own anti-corruption reforms – EP]. The 10 points mostly have to do with fighting corruption. But these 10 points are what is really important. We expect that Ukraine will fulfil them [within a year]."

Since the plan was motivated by EU member states’ loss of trust after Ukraine’s move to strip its anti-corruption agencies of their independence, it is focused solely on anti-corruption reforms and issues relating to the rule of law. The government set itself a deadline of 12 months to implement all 10 points of the plan. 

Three of those months have passed, yet almost zero progress has been made.

It is hardly surprising, then, that European diplomats and officials are increasingly warning of a growing lack of confidence in Ukraine’s commitment to the reforms required for EU accession.

Parliament is not demonstrating a willingness to work. And even the government, which undertook the commitments needed to rebuild trust, is stalling on their implementation. Here we publish the first expert analysis of the fulfilment of the Kachka-Kos plan, which reveals the biggest issues and some progress, which could be developed further.

Kyiv needs to demonstrate results as soon as possible. Because what’s at stake is our European partners’ trust in the government’s future promises – and by extension in the very foundations of Ukraine’s path towards EU membership.

Who’s doing the counting, and how?

Both the government and the expert community are well aware that the implementation of the Kachka-Kos plan is a critical issue in EU-Ukraine relations, including in the context of accession.

To some extent it is paradoxical that formally the plan is not part of the accession process – it exists independently. But in reality, for many EU member states the plan’s implementation is an indicator of whether one can speak of real progress by Ukraine in carrying out accession reforms.

European Commissioner Marta Kos explained this during her visit to Kyiv a month ago. In her interview with European Pravda, she emphasised that this plan encapsulates the main areas for reform being monitored by EU member states. "These are the priorities where we'll be very strict that the reforms should be done," she said, stressing that Ukraine itself set the deadline of 2026.

In the same interview, Kos also said she was aware of the "civic monitoring" of the plan and is in contact with the organisations that will be conducting it. "I met some of them in Kyiv to get a better picture – to have a view through some other glasses, not just our own, those living in the Brussels bubble," she explained.

This article presents the initial results of that monitoring, which is known as Membership Check.

It’s true that these are nowhere near all the reforms that will be required for Ukraine to become a member of the EU.

But without these, there will be no real progress. That is why they deserve special attention.

The monitoring is being conducted by a coalition of eight expert organisations, led by the New Europe Center, focusing on European integration, anti-corruption issues and judicial reform. The other members of the group are European Pravda, the Mezha Anti-Corruption Center, ANTS (the National Interests Advocacy Network), the DEJURE (Democracy, Justice, Reforms) Foundation, the Centre of Policy and Legal Reform, the Anti-Corruption Action Center, and Transparency International Ukraine.

To start with, we should explain the methodology.

At present, the consortium is only measuring the extent to which the Kachka-Kos plan has been implemented by the Ukrainian state. Here we proceed in the same way as the EU: although formally the plan was approved by the government and signed by Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration Taras Kachka, as far as the Europeans are concerned, it is a plan for the whole of Ukraine. What matters is the end result. And if that result isn’t there, Brussels and the other capitals won’t care who messed up or why a particular Ukrainian commitment has not been met.

This, incidentally, is also how the other accession reforms are assessed.

The end result is key. Merely setting up some "working groups" and "comprehensive dialogues", which all too often merely go through the motions, won’t cut it. No reform – no high score.

Of course, the political process matters too, so even statements by top government officials to the effect that Ukraine agrees to carry out a certain reform, or the development of a reform strategy, are worth a few initial points – but no more than 10% of the total score.

Drafting a piece of legislation and registering it in parliament can earn no more than 20% of the points (together with the 10% mentioned above).

After that, if a draft is genuinely good, the score can be raised to 50% by preparing it for adoption (passing a law at first reading, drafting amendments for the second reading, obtaining an expert assessment from the European Commission, etc.), because even a good law or secondary legislation only counts when it has been adopted. The coalition firmly believes that preparation should not be worth more than half of the points.

Only the adoption of a law or implementation of a reform allows a score of up to 100%.

No rubber-stamping is possible. A decision must be high-quality and effective, so the coalition analyses the substance of proposed reforms.

Firstly, the proposed/adopted reform must align with the goals of the Kachka-Kos plan. Secondly, reforms are not being carried out "for Marta Kos", but to bring about practical change in Ukraine, so the chosen implementation option must produce institutional and practical results. Thirdly, this area of reform matters specifically in the context of Ukraine’s progress towards EU accession, so reforms are analysed for compliance with the Interim Benchmarks of the Fundamentals cluster (chapters 23-24 of the accession negotiations). And if these benchmarks provide further clarification of the substance of a reform, the authorities’ actions must take that into account.

Finally, we should emphasise that the consortium’s assessment may be different from Brussels’. The consortium (albeit with slightly different members) experienced this when we conducted a Candidate Check study on Ukraine’s fulfilment of the EU candidate requirements. Our goal is to show real progress made by Ukraine, push forward reforms that have stalled and highlight what has been achieved, while ensuring that the European assessment is also appropriate.

However, so far there has been little to highlight.

A quarter of the time gone and minimal progress

All the points of the Kachka-Kos plan are important, but they vary in complexity of implementation and practical effect. The biggest is point 1 (Adopt comprehensive amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code and other legislation to ensure fast and high-quality justice). Even in the text of the plan it takes up the most space, consisting of five major elements, so the assessment of this point has the highest weighting – 20 points. We have also singled out two points – 6 and 9 – which do not require new reforms to be developed and adopted. These points received a weighting of 5 points each. The remaining seven elements of the plan received 10 points each, making the total maximum score 100 points.

The timeframe within which the entire plan must be implemented has also been defined. In the document signed by Taras Kachka and Marta Kos, Ukraine declared its intention to implement the measures set out in the plan within a year. And although this clause is formulated in a way that gives Kyiv the possibility to extend the timeframe, the European Commission expects Kyiv to complete everything during 2026.

The reality so far is very discouraging.

Three whole months of 2026 have passed – 25% of the time within which the EU expects the entire plan to be implemented. Yet the expert assessment currently gives Ukraine only 9 points out of 100 for its execution – not even 10%.

For some points, the score is zero or 0.5 (for example, when a point consists of two elements and progress has only been made on one of them. Even that is minimal).

All infographics by the Membership Check consortium

This result is a long way from acceptable. And if Ukraine continues to move at this pace, the complete failure of the plan is inevitable.

It is sad to write this, but that is the reality.

On only two of the ten points has Ukraine achieved even 20% implementation – at the level of "a draft law has been registered". These are points 6 (Appoint internationally vetted judges to the Constitutional Court and members of the High Council of Justice) and 8 (Adopt the draft law on declarations of integrity of judges; adopt legislation aimed at improving the enforcement of court decisions on monetary and non-monetary obligations and digitalisation). Moreover, with regard to the latter even this assessment is stretching it a bit, because the draft law on judges’ declarations of integrity fails to meet a direct requirement of the Kachka-Kos plan: it does not apply to Supreme Court judges.

Point 6 is simpler, because this is an element of the plan where no reforms need to be adopted. Ukraine simply has to carry out what it has already committed to.

Four points of the plan are clear stragglers.

Two of them demonstrate the failure of prosecutorial reform, which the European Commission and experts were pointing out as long ago as last year. Despite these warnings, Kyiv currently shows no signs of having listened to its European partners. According to the European approach, the prosecution service is part of the justice infrastructure, which is why "prosecutorial" requirements have been included in this plan.

Thus, on point 3 (Conduct a comprehensive review of the selection and dismissal procedure of the Prosecutor General), Ukraine has scored a dismal 0 points and a note says "No progress has been made".

On point 4 (Ensure a transparent and merit-based selection process, appointments and transfers for prosecutors to significant positions), formally at least some actions and discussions have taken place, so Ukraine scores 0.5 points out of 10. This reform has particular weight, as it is about reinstating anti-corruption reform after the events of 22 July 2025, when parliament voted for and the president immediately signed a law rolling back anti-corruption reforms and introducing authoritarian changes to the functioning of the prosecution service. And while the anti-corruption framework ultimately had to be reinstated, the authorities "forgot" about the prosecution service and still appear to have no intention of tackling the problem.

Two other points with extremely low scores of 5% each are point 2 (Ensure that NABU has effective access to impartial, timely and high-quality forensic examinations) and point 10 (Develop and strengthen internal control systems against high-level corruption). Needless to say, these elements are a litmus test for Ukraine’s partners – yet Kyiv has shown no visible progress in implementing them.

Three other elements could be called mid-level performers based on the results, since they currently have 10% of the points, which is slightly above the average score.

But can a sector be called mid-level if there are no tangible results?

After all, 10% corresponds to a level where there are only general ideas about how to implement a point, or statements by top officials, but no official draft decisions.

This is the case, for example, with point 1 on comprehensive amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure. There have been statements (by, for example, Deputy Prime Minister Kachka) about Kyiv’s intention to implement this point, and there appear to be some initial draft proposals, but nothing has even been submitted for a government vote.

This is also true of point 5 (Reform the State Bureau of Investigation). There have been statements about the need for reform, but no documents have been drafted.

It’s the same story with point 7 (Extend the involvement of international experts in the selection commission for the High Qualification Commission of Judges).

The situation is different regarding the approval of the Anti-Corruption Strategy and its implementation plan. This is not a reform as such, merely a strategic overview of the situation. Yet even these steps remain at an early stage.

What should be done about this?

Ultimately, the Kachka-Kos plan does not stand alone. It is a concentration of the EU’s priority requirements for Ukraine within the accession process. All its elements must be implemented, both to restore EU trust and to meet the accession benchmarks used to assess readiness for membership. This means that progress on them is also close to zero. The New Europe Center has also published detailed conclusions by the consortium on each point, describing the link between the plan and the benchmarks.

So the situation as it stands is extremely alarming. And the delays in implementing the plan are already affecting Ukraine’s relations with the EU.

It’s true that in Kyiv, they may point out that parliament is not terribly functional at the moment. But this explanation doesn’t wash.

First of all, as far as the EU is concerned, it is fundamentally irrelevant who is slowing down the implementation of changes. Either Ukraine fulfils its commitments or it does not. After all, it is not Ukraine's parliament, government, etc. that are joining the EU, but the state as a whole.

Secondly, it isn’t always parliament that’s holding things up. In many cases, laws have not even been drafted.

Thirdly, the narrative about a "non-functioning parliament" is a very dangerous one. If parliament can’t pass laws, then how can one speak about moving towards EU accession? Hundreds of laws must be passed on the road to EU membership. If Ukraine is not capable of doing that, how can EU accession be possible?

From the government to parliament and the president, Ukraine must do everything necessary to prove to the EU that it can carry out fundamental reforms and renew this work. Progress on the Kachka-Kos plan is the ideal instrument for this.

Sergiy Sydorenko

Editor, European Pravda

Study by the Membership Check coalition

Our discussion reaffirmed that Russia’s occupation of parts of Ukraine is not just about battlelines of geopolitics:  it is about people – the dismantling of freedoms and rights, and the erosion of identity and diversity of the Ukrainian society.

No place captures this human dimension of war more starkly than Crimea – occupied for more than a decade. Crimea is a home – to Ukrainians of many backgrounds, including the indigenous Crimean Tatar people.

And Crimea is a template of what Russian occupation brings -

there in 2014, and in other temporarily occupied territories today.

Crimea is a place of striking beauty, and a meeting point of cultures and histories.

Those of us lucky enough to have visited before Russia’s occupation remember that and feel the tragedy of knowing that a generation of Ukrainian children is now growing up under Russian occupation. 

As we heard, they are taught a single, manufactured, political story about who they are, what their country is, and what they should be willing to die for.

Russian occupation is a project of demographic manipulation. In Crimea, opposition has been driven underground or silenced. Our panelists spoke of enforced disappearances, intimidation and torture, of families who think twice before speaking on the phone.

The Crimean Tatars – indigenous to the peninsula – feel this repression especially sharply. Many have been persecuted, imprisoned, or forced to flee, echoing the trauma of the mass deportation of 1944.

Alongside political pressure comes discrimination against belief and culture: a narrowing of space for non-Russian identities, and the message that coexistence without assimilation is not permitted.

The situation of the Crimean Tatars, including the religious discrimination they face, should matter to anyone who values their cultural or religious identity. 

What happens to children under occupation should trouble all of us. Speakers in Geneva described propaganda that begins early, even in kindergartens – children receive persistent messages that it is a noble thing to give your life for the Russian state, that those who refuse war are cowards, and that there is only one acceptable identity and one acceptable version of history – Russian.

Crimea has been turned into something closer to a military base than a normal society.

Young people face pressure to conform, to enlist, to keep silent and to grow up with core goal of joining the Russian army.

One of our panelists, Oleh a young man forced to leave Crimea after receiving a conscription letter into the Russian army, spoke of an information vacuum – of how hard it is for those still on the peninsula to access independent news, to speak freely online, or to hear perspectives beyond state television.

* * * * *

The UK has not forgotten about Crimea – and we will not. We will continue to advocate for the human rights of all Ukrainians at the United Nations, and across the world.

Listening to Artem, and to Crimean Tatar voices who refuse to be erased, I was reminded that the struggle for Crimea is a struggle for the right to live freely as yourself: to speak your language, practice your faith, teach your children truth, and choose your future.

The UK will not forget Crimea.

But he never fully defeated them, and their reporting on the regime’s corruption and abuses of power has helped fuel the opposition’s rise ahead of April’s election.

There is now a distinct possibility that Hungary’s main opposition party, Tisza, will defeat Viktor Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party in the country’s parliamentary elections on April 12.

This has prompted Tisza’s leader, Péter Magyar, to promise that if his party wins, one of its first acts in government will be to suspend the license of the Media Services and Support Trust Fund (MTVA), the state body that finances and oversees public-media assets. Pulling the plug on the pro-Orbán MTVA is long overdue.

For more than 15 years, Orbán’s government has steadily erected barriers to objective reporting and tightened its grip on the media ecosystem. Through a combination of hostile takeovers, pressure campaigns, and interference with regulators like the National Media and Infocommunications Authority, it has fundamentally altered public discourse.

As a result, 80% of the country’s news outlets have become pro-government mouthpieces,

including formerly independent publications such as Origo and Index.

Media capture on this scale, extensively documented in a major new study, is unprecedented in the European Union and demonstrates how quickly pluralism can be destroyed through legal engineering.

My own experience underscores the calculated nature of Orbán’s efforts to control the media that Hungarians consume.

In 2016, I was the deputy editor-in-chief of Népszabadság, once the highest-circulation daily broadsheet in Hungary, when it was closed overnight. Within days, our website and massive digital archive spanning decades were inaccessible.

The takeover was orchestrated and executed by Mediaworks, a conglomerate owned by the oligarch Lőrinc Mészáros, Orbán’s childhood friend. Mészáros, whose fortune was built on state contracts, now effectively controls the entire print media landscape and numerous online platforms.

By now, it is clear that the MTVA’s official commitment to impartiality is a fiction.

The Budapest-based Republikon Institute recently monitored state media’s evening news broadcasts and found that Fidesz and its coalition partner received 15 hours of positive coverage per week.

By contrast, Tisza and Magyar were subjected to more than five hours of overtly critical or defamatory reporting.

With this propaganda machine at its disposal, Fidesz can steer the national conversation as it sees fit.

During this campaign, character assassination and geopolitical fearmongering have featured prominently. In a desperate bid to shore up support for Orbán, Hungarian public media are currently portraying him as the sole guarantor of peace in "times of war."

Another of the state’s main narratives is that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has supposedly hatched a "master plan" with the European Commission to "dethrone" Orbán and install Magyar as a puppet.

Moreover, domestic "scandals" are manufactured to support the regime’s central claim: that the opposition is out of touch with Hungarians and funded by foreign interests.

Last August, Index published a document that it claimed was a Tisza plan proposing a 33% tax rate.

Even though Tisza promptly denied the veracity of the report, the story dominated the political agenda for months. 

Index later published the party’s alleged proposals for a "dog and cat tax," leading the government to warn pensioners that Magyar would force them to euthanize their pets.

While the Metropolitan Court eventually ruled that Tisza had nothing to do with the text, the damage was done.

These domestic smears are intended to sow doubt among the electorate and are subsequently linked to broader geopolitical grievances. For example, the regime recently stopped two cash-in-transit vehicles during a routine transfer from Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank to the State Savings Bank of Ukraine.

Within minutes, pro-government outlets framed the incident as evidence of "dirty money" flowing through the country to support a foreign-controlled political opposition. By invoking national security in its partisan propaganda, the government reinforces the idea that dissent is synonymous with treason.

The Hungarian media’s financial foundation is also fundamentally lopsided. Since 2015, the government and state-owned companies have reportedly spent in excess of €1.1 billion ($1.3 billion) on advertising, funneling taxpayer money almost exclusively into Fidesz-aligned outlets.

There are, however, signs that the regime’s information monopoly is beginning to fracture. A small number of independent newsrooms have managed to pierce the government’s propaganda shield, despite being under constant political pressure and largely starved of advertising revenue.

Investigative outlets like Direkt36, Telex, and 444.hu, which have survived for years on the doggedness of their staff and the support of their readers, have chipped away at the wall of misinformation with their persistent reporting on corruption and the regime’s ties to the Kremlin.

This has provided the public with a shared set of facts that the state’s coordinated megaphone has failed to suppress, creating the conditions for Tisza to emerge as a viable challenger. After 16 years, reality is proving more resilient than manufactured narratives.

This spells trouble for Orbán in April’s elections.

Ultimately, the independent journalism that Orbán has sought to tame – but never fully muzzled – could be his government’s undoing.

This article originally appeared on Project Syndicate and is republished with permission from the copyright holder.

Next year, France is set to elect a new president, so the recent local vote was expected to provide a snapshot of a country soon to choose Emmanuel Macron’s successor.

Although the second round is still ahead and the names of future mayors in the largest cities, including the capital, are not yet determined, the first round was revealing in itself. Ultimately, only 1,526 communes, or 4.4% of the total, advance to the second round.

The local elections highlighted the rapid marginalisation of the presidential camp. Meanwhile, the far-right improved its results, though not as much as many had expected.

This is particularly important for Ukraine, because while key issues for it, such as sending weapons to Kyiv. The opinion data in the file points to a country that still supports a serious defence posture, but unevenly. In February, 58% of respondents backed a major increase in France’s defence budget. Support for supplying arms to Ukraine, however, stood at 47%, against 39% opposed, down from much higher levels in 2022. 

So what changes in electoral sentiment in France were revealed by the local elections? And what does this mean in the context of the upcoming presidential elections?

Elections with a record-low turnout

The first takeaway from the recent vote is voter fatigue.

Official participation reached just 57.1%, the second-lowest first-round municipal turnout of the Fifth Republic after the Covid-disrupted vote of 2020.

In 68% of communes, only one list was registered, which drained any sense of suspense.

In France’s 25,000 communes with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, voters can no longer pick and choose names on the ballot. They must now vote for a complete list, which have weakened the feeling that a single vote could still shape the final result.

The age divide makes the warning sharper.

An Ifop survey conducted in early February, before the vote, estimated that only 39% of 18-24-year-olds and 46% of 25-34-year-olds were certain to vote, against 72% of voters aged 65 and over.

France’s presidential pre-campaign is beginning in a democracy where younger voters appear significantly less invested in local politics than their elders.

In addition, only 1,526 communes, or 4.4% of the national total, are heading for another vote. In those places, lists above 10% can stay in the race, while lists above 5% can merge with a qualified list. 

And what does the vote itself reveal? The results in Paris are particularly telling. Paris is not the whole country, but it it shows many of the same political tensions.

Socialist Emmanuel Grégoire came first with 37.98%, well ahead of Republican Rachida Dati on 25.46%. Behind them, two extremists and one centrist passed the 10% mark.

The result did not produce one clear winner. The left is in the strongest position, but it is still divided.

It offers a simple picture of French politics before 2027: a left that leads without being fully united, a right that remains competitive only through regrouping, and a centre that barely survives.

What did the far-right show?

The right is where 2027 is already being tested most clearly.

The central question is no longer whether the National Rally can score well. It can.

The real question is whether the French right can still exist outside its gravitational pull.

Nice is the clearest case. Eric Ciotti, running with Union of the Right for the Republic (UDR) and backed by the National Rally, finished far ahead of the outgoing mayor Christian Estrosi, 43.43% to 30.92%, with the left also qualified on 11.93%.

Ciotti’s strategie was to benefit from the National Rally backing without displaying it too ostentatiously. The result suggests that, at least in parts of the south, that formula is becoming electorally workable. 

Toulon offers the mirror image. There too, the National Rally finished strongly ahead, with Laure Lavalette on 42.05%, against 29.54% for the outgoing mayor Josée Massi and 15.71% for Republican senator Michel Bonnus.

But unlike in Nice, the post-first-round reflex was immediately anti-National Rally: Bonnus withdrew and reached out to Massi. That does not guarantee defeat for the RN. It does, however, show that making a stand against the far right still matters to many French voters and elected officials.

At the same time, the National Rally’s municipal picture remains uneven. In cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants, it reached 20 second rounds, which is better than in 2020 but still worse than in 2014. Outside the Mediterranean strongholds, the movement remained weak in many large metropolitan centres.

In Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Nantes, Montpellier, Strasbourg and Bordeaux, National Rally candidates all stayed below 8%. One of the reasons identified in the reporting is territorial weakness itself. In those big cities, a third of RN lead candidates were parachuted in or worked elsewhere. 

Stagnation of the center, success of the left

The second takeaway from the recent elections is that the political center no longer structures the political landscape.

Édouard Philippe, Former Prime Minister and the most likely presidential candidate from the presidential camp, may survive. Macronism, as a political organising centre, does not.

Philippe did what he needed to do in Le Havre, finishing first with 43.76% and preserving his national credibility after tying his local fate to his presidential ambitions.

But his case almost proves the opposite of what a healthy centrist bloc would look like.

The documents show that only figures with an existence before Macronism, such as Philippe and François Bayrou, still resist electorally. Elsewhere, the presidential camp is often absent, marginal or reduced to supporting local notables of another colour. 

The left is gaining more and more voters each elections.

Its problem is leadership. The Socialist Party remains strong in several major cities, including Paris, Rennes and Nantes, and in Strasbourg Catherine Trautmann, supported by the Socialist Party, finished ahead of both the right and the outgoing Ecologist mayor.

But La France Insoumise is also becoming harder to ignore at local level. In Roubaix, its candidate David Guiraud won 46.6% and came close to being elected in the first round, which points to real local support rather than a temporary protest vote.

The Ecologists, for their part, are no longer the rising force they looked like in 2020, but they still matter because they often help hold together a divided left.

These elections also remind us of an older rule of French local politics: roots matter. In municipal contests, party labels are only part of the story. Voters also look for familiarity, local knowledge and proof that a candidate genuinely belongs to the place they want to govern.

That helps explain why Édouard Philippe’s anchoring in Le Havre strengthens his results, why the National Rally remains weaker in cities where its candidates lack local standing, and why well-known names can still be rejected if they appear parachuted in.

Philippe Gustin, chief of staff to Sébastien Lecornu, was badly beaten in Fougerolles-Saint-Valbert after rivals attacked him as an outsider. Louis Sarkozy also suffered a heavy defeat in Menton after arriving only a few months before the vote. 

* * * * *

If there is a winner of the first round, it is not one single camp.

The left remains the best placed in many major cities, from Paris to Nantes and Strasbourg, even if it is still divided over who should lead it.

On the right, the National Rally has not swept the country, but it is continuing to pull the wider right into its orbit, most clearly in places like Nice.

The clearest loser is the centre: Édouard Philippe has preserved his own position in Le Havre, but Macronism no longer looks like the force organising French politics.

The second round will now show whether those trends can be turned into power. Can the left turn first place into discipline? Can the right unite without disappearing into the RN’s orbit? And can the centre still matter beyond a handful of local fiefdoms?

That is what this election is really beginning to answer.

Charlotte Guillou-Clerc

Journalist, France

Kyiv is launching a legal and political fight against Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s regime in several jurisdictions at once.

On 5 March, two Ukrainian vehicles belonging to the state-run Oschadbank were seized by a Hungarian special service as they were transporting gold and US$80 million in cash. The employees who were escorting the consignment were kept handcuffed for more than a day. They were denied access to either a lawyer or a consul, and eventually they were deported, after being robbed as well, since their phones and personal cash were never returned.

Moreover, the Hungarian authorities have no intention of returning the seized money and gold.

To create at least some legal basis for this, the Hungarian parliament has urgently passed an "individual" law prohibiting the return of the assets to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the Hungarian government has issued a demand: the seized money will only be returned to Ukraine if Ukraine restores the transit of Russian oil to Hungary. Kyiv has described this as "banditry" and "state terrorism", but the Hungarian government is deaf to such accusations.

There are reasons behind these drastic measures by Orbán’s team.

First, there’s more than just oil at stake. Orbán is using the "Ukrainian gold" story in his political struggle against his electoral rival, Péter Magyar. He claims that the Hungarian opposition is being bankrolled by a "Ukrainian military mafia".

Second, there is information to suggest Kremlin involvement in Hungary’s actions.

Against this backdrop, Kyiv has been trying to obtain public support from Europe, but to no avail: the EU remains deliberately silent.

Torture, threats and other "minor violations"

The reality of what happened in Hungary on 5 March is hard to take in. Kyiv, too, initially remained silent when the news began to trickle in.

Oschadbank first realised something was wrong when its automatic geolocation system showed that two armoured cash-in-transit vehicles carrying cash to Ukraine via Hungary had suddenly changed their route, headed towards Budapest, and stopped on the territory of the country’s Counterterrorism Centre. Phone calls to the employees went unanswered.

At the same time, the Hungarian authorities were ignoring the urgent enquiries being made by Ukrainian diplomats. This left little doubt that it was a special operation. On the night of 5-6 March, Kyiv issued a statement on the seizure of the money and Ukrainian hostages by the Hungarian state.

The diplomatic pressure was kept up for a day. Then, without officially informing Ukraine, the Hungarians brought the detained Ukrainians as far as the border, informed them that they were banned from entering the EU for three years, and expelled them from the country.

Later, details of their detention became known that shocked Ukraine.

The two armoured vehicles, which had been regularly transporting cash to Ukraine in recent years under an official contract from Raiffeisen Bank International in Austria, had been travelling along their usual route, of which the Hungarian side had been informed.

During a scheduled stop at a petrol station on the Budapest ring road, the Ukrainians – who, in line with international rules, were unarmed – were attacked by armed representatives of a Hungarian special service. According to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, the special forces even had grenade launchers and machine guns.

Even more shocking were the details of the bank employees’ detention. They were kept in handcuffs for more than a day, and for much of that time they were blindfolded (according to some reports, ski masks were put on them back-to-front and pressed tightly down on their eyes). One of the detainees lost consciousness. Such detention conditions are considered equivalent to torture.

While breaking into the armoured vehicles, the Hungarian "counter-terrorist" officers also told at least two of the Ukrainians that they would never see Ukraine again and would remain in prison in Hungary.

Finally, the Ukrainians were also robbed. Their phones, money and other personal belongings were not returned to them when they were deported.

The Russian hallmark in Orbán’s special operation

However, no official charges were brought against the Ukrainians. They were interrogated as "witnesses" to an unclear crime. The questioning, contrary to the rules, was conducted not in Ukrainian but in Russian, and the Ukrainians were required to answer in Russian.

European Pravda sources say that one of the "Hungarians" who conducted the interrogation spoke Russian like a native speaker. This is not conclusive proof that he was Russian, but the possibility cannot be ruled out.

There are in fact several reasons to believe that Russians were involved in the special operation.

Orbán’s party election headquarters is known to be working with political strategists from Moscow, who arrived in Hungary under diplomatic cover. They are members of a Kremlin team that specialises in interfering in foreign elections, led by Sergey Kiriyenko, deputy head of Vladimir Putin’s presidential administration.

Until recently, this team had been working in Moldova, where, among other things, they built a network of bots to influence online discussions.

Tellingly, Hungarian-language posts promoting narratives favourable to Orbán about the seizure of the cash-in-transit vehicles suddenly received thousands of likes from users listing their place of residence as Moldova. The "bot farm" had simply been moved from Moldova to Hungary, saving the effort of creating new identities for the accounts. This anomaly was spotted by Hungarian fact-checkers, and the Russians will likely rectify this error.

But European Pravda sources believe Russia’s involvement is not limited to the internet.

It’s widely thought that it was the Russians who pointed the Hungarians to that particular convoy, which included Hennadii Kuznetsov, a former top official of the Security Service of Ukraine now working in Oschadbank’s security service. His name was reported in Russian sources while the detained Ukrainians were still behind bars and their names had not yet been made public.

Nevertheless, it is the Hungarian government that bears responsibility for this operation.

There is no doubt that it was personally approved by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Interestingly, only half a day before the attack on the Ukrainian convoy, Orbán personally visited the counterterrorism centre that would later seize the armoured vehicles.

This visit provided political approval to the officers, who understood that attacking armoured cash-in-transit vehicles with flashing lights and breaking into bank safes was clearly illegal.

Why did Orbán need to do this?

What is the objective of such a blatant and obvious violation of all the rules? What does Orbán stand to gain? Is all of this really just to blackmail Ukraine into reopening the oil pipeline?

The true purpose of the special operation is political. On 12 April, elections are set to be held that could result in a change of government in Hungary.

Media outlets loyal to the government have claimed that the seized money may have been intended to bankroll opposition leader Péter Magyar and his Tisza party.

There is no evidence to support these accusations, and there are documents that actually contradict them. Nevertheless, the Hungarian parliament urgently passed a law stipulating that the state has the right to confiscate the money and valuables from the two specific Ukrainian vehicles and must hold them for at least 60 days while checking whether the funds were intended to finance the Hungarian opposition.

This has to be the first time in history that a law was passed purely for two specific vehicles.

Why is this so important for Orbán? The explanation is simple: financing a political party from abroad is considered an extremely serious violation of electoral law – one that could even potentially lead to a party being removed from the election race.

Despite being unsubstantiated, this accusation quickly became a central element of Orbán’s propaganda campaign. Efforts to promote this narrative are reportedly being assisted by a Kremlin team, whose activities have been confirmed by the Financial Times.

It is unlikely that these accusations will ever reach a court. The chances of proving this claim are virtually zero, even within Hungary’s judicial system. But in information warfare, just making the accusation is often enough.

Europe’s silence and Ukraine’s response

When European Pravda asked Volodymyr Zelenskyy about his expectations of Ukraine’s Western partners in this situation, he responded: "I have spoken with many of them about this, and I will repeat publicly what I said to them: today Europe needs to do one thing – not remain silent."

Yet silent the EU has remained.

The European Commission and other EU bodies have no direct leverage over the intelligence services of member states. Under European law, this area falls under exclusive national competence.

However, in his attack on Ukraine, Orbán has gone so far that the EU now has grounds to intervene. Kyiv has even suggested how this could be done.

On Monday, Andrii Pyshnyy, head of the National Bank of Ukraine, sent official letters to several European leaders: his Austrian counterpart Martin Kocher; Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank; Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat; and John Berrigan, the European Commission’s Director‑General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union. European Pravda has seen copies of these documents.

In the letters, Pyshnyy warns the Europeans that their inaction and silence, in a situation where a member state is effectively supporting banditry by its own special services, could have dramatic consequences for the entire EU.

"We cannot allow EU space to be turned into a feudal medieval Europe," he writes.

In his letter to Lagarde, Pyshnyy also notes that such blatant violations create additional reputational risks for the development of the EU’s single market and may complicate plans to strengthen the euro.

Writing to the European Commission, he asks it to act as an independent third party to clarify all the circumstances of the incident objectively and impartially, and guarantees that Ukraine will provide all necessary information. He also stresses that "the institutional capacity and reputation of the entire EU" is at stake.

The letter also states:

"Such gross violations of established practices of international cooperation in the banking sector are essentially a politically motivated manipulation of EU anti-money-laundering rules. This directly creates additional reputational risks for the development of the EU’s single market and undermines trust in European compliance procedures."

Despite Kyiv’s arguments, Brussels has not found the courage to act.

The European Commission merely confirmed that it had received the letter from the head of the National Bank of Ukraine. When European Pravda contacted the press service of the European Central Bank, it took some time to consider its response, later replying briefly: "We have no comment to make on this for now, and we will get back to you when we have more updates on this matter."

This hesitation on the part of EU institutions may be connected to the fact that Brussels had previously decided to suspend all criticism of Orbán until the elections so as not to fuel the anti-European propaganda of Hungary’s ruling party.

But Hungary’s actions have now crossed a line. The EU should respond.

Regardless of what the EU does, Ukraine is preparing for a legal battle. Kyiv will challenge the clearly illegal actions of the Hungarian authorities regarding the detained Ukrainians. It is almost certain that we will see a lawsuit brought by the Ukrainian state or the state-owned Oschadbank in European courts.

It can also be said with certainty that Orbán won’t be returning the $80 million seized by the Hungarian authorities before election day, because doing so would mean admitting that Hungary’s actions were unfounded.

For now, the Hungarian regime, together with its Russian consultants, is going all in. By attacking armoured bank vehicles, Orbán has demonstrated that he is willing to cross unprecedented lines.

We may yet see new red lines crossed before the elections – lines that still seem untouchable today.

Sergiy Sydorenko

Editor, European Pravda

Tetiana Vysotska

European Pravda correspondent in Brussels

The new Dutch government may lack stability due to its insufficient votes within the coalition, but it certainly does not lack an understanding of Ukraine’s significance for the future of Europe. That is why the new prime minister chose to visit Ukraine on 8 March as his first trip outside the European Union and only his second foreign visit overall – the first was to the EU capital, Brussels.

Before leaving Kyiv, Prime Minister Jetten agreed to give an interview to European Pravda.

Mr Jetten, this is your second foreign visit as prime minister – the first one was to Brussels. Why did you choose Ukraine? And what can Ukraine expect with you as prime minister?

Well, first of all, I'm very happy to be here because Ukraine has suffered so much over the past few years, fighting for the freedom of all Ukrainian people, but also fighting for European values.

For me as the new prime minister, it's super important to underline to all Dutch voters that we will continue to support this country, that we stand ready to increase cooperation, both military and non-military, but also that the Netherlands can play a vital role in the justice that needs to take place as soon as this war is finished.

By talking not only to the president and the prime minister but also to many Ukrainians today, I can bring back the stories, the suffering, and the heroism of the Ukrainian people to hopefully also inspire people in my country and help them understand why we will continue to support you.

Prime Minister, since you referred to justice, let me focus on that. Let me be frank: the Netherlands is also perceived as a country that is slowing down the creation of the Special Tribunal [for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine]. We have heard statements that it might not be established until after 2028, which Ukraine considers unacceptable because it is too far off. Do you anticipate that this might happen under your leadership?

At the moment, I'm very glad that the advance party is on the way, diving into the details to establish the tribunal. It is of utmost importance that we speed up the process.

This is also what I discussed today with President Zelenskyy: what the Netherlands can do to make sure that we continue to progress on this very important topic. I just had a very long and intense conversation with former prisoners of war and abducted children who are luckily now back in Ukraine. It's their stories and their suffering that underline the importance of bringing to justice all those war criminals who were responsible for it.

Do you anticipate that the tribunal could start working this year, or maybe in 2027?

For this year, it's important that we fill in more details about how the tribunal could work, what could be a good location in the Netherlands, and also to make sure that other parties in the Council of Europe will be part of it so that we can start the work as soon as possible.

During the interview. Photo by the Embassy of the Netherlands in Ukraine

We've heard today that you want to see Ukraine in the EU. Do you think it is possible for that to happen while you are in office?

Well, I hope to be in office for four years, and maybe even more, but you never know in Dutch politics!

But I think what is important is that the future of Ukraine is in Europe.

The reforms that the Ukrainian government has implemented over the past few years were very important steps, but there is more work to be done.

If Ukraine continues on the path of reforms, then the European Union can also continue on a path toward Ukrainian membership of the EU.

What we stated in our coalition agreement is that this is also part of the new geopolitical world order. Europe needs to think about what the European family should look like.

From the perspective of my government, it's an EU with Ukraine, but it needs to go hand in hand with the necessary reforms to make sure that all European member states will be able to accept Ukrainian membership.

Do you think the current enlargement methodology needs to be changed significantly? For instance, would you support a model in which Ukraine becomes a political member first and gains full membership benefits later?

The Netherlands has for a long time been a very strong advocate for modernisation of almost everything within the EU – accession, but also the European budget, European agricultural policies, and many other topics.

On many topics, Europeans need to be less naive and understand that if we want a stronger continent that delivers more for our people, we have to do a better job in a modernised EU.

In terms of Ukrainian accession, I think we should also be careful. To prevent a lot of disappointments in the years to come, we shouldn't promise things that we are not able to deliver.

So I would see a step-by-step approach. If we increase support for Ukraine in terms of all the reforms that need to take place, I'm sure Ukraine can speed up its side of the process.

But do you understand that Russia will do everything possible to prevent Ukraine from joining the EU unless some political steps are done differently than they are now?

Yes, and that's why we've stated that we have to look at the European family also from a geopolitical point of view – not only regarding Ukraine, but also other countries that would love to be part of the European family.

If we do not increase our cooperation and if we don't provide a clear path to EU membership, it's not only Russia but also other countries that will try to influence the process and destabilise the European continent.

So that is something we need to keep in mind during all these negotiations.

As a Ukrainian who spent three years in the Netherlands as a refugee, I want to ask you: what is going to happen to Ukrainians after 2027? What will their status be, and what will happen to those who are living in temporary centres?

That's a very good question, and it's also one of the top priorities for our new minister for migration to have in-depth talks with European partners to clarify in time for Ukrainian refugees in Europe how we can provide them with the right shelter, education, work rights, and so on.

Hopefully during this year we can provide clearer answers on that as soon as we've progressed in the negotiation process.

How can Dutch businesses be sure that Ukraine is safe enough to invest? We don't know whether all territories will be de-occupied. Some might remain occupied, and the Russian threat will still remain. What reasons are there for Dutch businesses to invest in Ukraine?

I had a very interesting conversation on this topic with the prime minister today, and I'm convinced that we can create much more business-to-business cooperation between the Netherlands and Ukraine – not only in the defence industry, but also in the energy sector and many others.

I will ask the minister for foreign trade to come up with a clear plan to make sure that Dutch businesses are willing to do more here in Ukraine, also in the short term.

During the war?

Yes, both during and after.

Daria Meshcheriakova and Sergiy Sydorenko

European Pravda