The Saturday sitting was unusual but deliberate. May 9 is Europe Day, and Magyar’s Tisza Party has vowed to reboot Hungary’s relationship with the EU, not least to unfreeze sorely needed funding. The first act of Ágnes Forsthoffer, only the second woman to hold the position of Speaker of the National Assembly, was to order that the EU flag once again fly outside Parliament, alongside the Hungarian tricolor.
Tisza’s two-thirds majority meant there was no jeopardy in the appointment of either Magyar or Forsthoffer, but there was some drama. Addressing the inaugural session, President Tamás Sulyok told Tisza MPs they had been handed a “historic responsibility” to bolster the “tranquility of public life.”
Yet Magyar has spoken of a “regime change,” a central pillar of which would be replacing all Orbán-era appointees to state bodies. In his first speech to Parliament as PM, the Tisza leader repeated his call for the heads of public institutions appointed by Fidesz “to resign today, but no later than May 31, and let President Tamás Sulyok be the first to do so.”
The proceedings inside Parliament were followed on giant screens out on a packed Kossuth tér, where crowds had been building up all day. There was music, speeches, a miitary parade, and a party atmosphere, which carried over to an afterparty on the Danube embankment.
All photos taken for the Budapest Business Journal by Péter Fath, former CEO and later board member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hungary.
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of May 22, 2026.
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