Written by Fatmah Alotaibi
The veto that survived
On 12 April 2026, Péter Magyar’s Tisza party, a conservative, centre to centre-right, pro-European populist party, won a major victory in Hungary’s parliamentary elections, bringing Viktor Orbán’s 16 years in power to an end. Magyar pledged to restore the rule of law, rebuild democratic institutions, and reintegrate Hungary into the European mainstream. One policy was left untouched. The day after his victory, Magyar told reporters he would block EU proposals to sanction Israel. Days later, he invited Benjamin Netanyahu to Budapest, a gesture sharpened by the fact that Netanyahu remains the subject of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant and that Magyar has separately pledged to reverse Orbán’s withdrawal from the Court. Hungary is changing direction on almost everything. It is not changing direction on Israel.
Orbán’s veto shield
Fidesz, the Christian nationalist party led by Viktor Orbán, was re-elected in 2014. Following that re-election, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was restructured and renamed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade. A new vice-undersecretariat covering ‘the South’, including the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, was given the same organisational weight as the entire Euro-Atlantic portfolio. Roughly 70% of the ministry’s staff were replaced with young, inexperienced recruits, a majority of whom were regarded as loyal to Fidesz. Political loyalty and personal ties to the party leadership, rather than diplomatic skills or technical expertise, became the currency of advancement. This was a foreign policy apparatus that answered to the party rather than to the professional diplomatic service or to the norms of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy.
The instrument Orbán fashioned from this apparatus was, above all, a veto. Under the Common Foreign and Security Policy unanimity rules, any single member state can block collective EU foreign policy action. Hungary used this power systematically to shield Israel from EU accountability: blocking sanctions on settlers implicated in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, obstructing review of the EU-Israel Association Agreement under its Article 2 human rights clause, and, in April 2025, Hungary announced its planned withdrawal from the ICC on the same day Netanyahu, who was subject to an ICC arrest warrant, arrived in Budapest. As the European Council on Foreign Relations analysis observed, Hungary stood as ‘the main exception’ to a gradually consolidating European consensus on differentiating between Israel and its settlements: that is, on treating settlement activity and settler violence as conduct the EU will not underwrite.
As the Heinrich Böll Stiftung’s study of Orbán’s alliance building concluded, these relationships were tied to parties, and political actors selected on grounds of interest and ideology rather than to durable state-to-state architecture. There is no pact or permanent bilateral mechanism that would outlast the government that created it, and many loyalist staff in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade hold their positions at the party’s discretion. A new government would keep Hungary’s formal EU veto power under unanimous decision-making in foreign policy, but it would not necessarily share the same political intent or supporting staff to use it in Israel’s favour. As a result, the effectiveness of that veto depends largely on Orbán remaining in power.
What changes and what does not
Magyar’s retention of the Israel veto is not an ideological inheritance but a low cost position within an existing coalition. The Arab Reform Initiative categorises Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, and Hungary as states that have backed Israel unconditionally, against a second group including Belgium, Ireland, and Spain pressing for stronger EU action on Palestinian self-determination. Magyar’s position is not isolated; he has signalled alignment with Germany rather than continuation of Orbán’s disruptive posture. The absence of a domestic cost is itself a product of the Orbán years: more than a decade of alignment with Netanyahu made pro-Israel positioning the Hungarian political default rather than a contested choice, and the regime’s own outlets framed it as part of a broader civilisational project against what Orbán has called ‘Wokeism and mass migration’. No Hungarian opposition formation, Tisza included, campaigned against that framing. Maintaining the veto brings no reward for Magyar, but it also incurs no cost.
Magyar’s broader position supports this interpretation. He has pledged to reverse Orbán’s decision to withdraw from the ICC, bringing Hungary back under the Court that issued the arrest warrant for Netanyahu, and has also invited Netanyahu to Budapest. The division is clear: on international accountability institutions, Magyar appears to be moving closer to the European mainstream, but this is not matched in Hungary’s wider EU positioning. If the veto were a matter of principle, these positions would shift together, but they do not. This suggests the veto is driven more by political positioning, which continues to bring benefits.
Orbán used Hungary as a disruptive force in the EU, including on Israel-related issues. This is unlikely to continue under a government that wants to align more with EU rules, meaning Hungary would act less independently and more in line with other member states.
For those who wanted stronger EU action on Palestinian rights, there is little cause for optimism. Removing Hungary from the blocking coalition changes the balance but does not break it. Even under qualified majority voting, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, and Italy together represent roughly 36% of the EU’s population, which is enough to prevent collective measures. Remove Hungary from that grouping, and the remaining states still command significant blocking weight. Meanwhile, settlement expansion and settler violence in the Gaza Strip and West Bank continue to deepen, moving faster than the EU can respond.
The lesson for the Arab world
EU’s paralysis on Israel-Palestine predates Orbán and will outlast him; Hungary’s veto was symptomatic of that paralysis, not its cause. The temptation will be to see Magyar’s return to the EU’s mainstream position, rejoining the ICC, and a more moderate spoken tone as evidence that European policy on Palestine is changing. What is shifting is the tone. As the Al-Shabaka roundtable on the 2024-25 wave of European recognition of Palestinian statehood argues, European symbolic actions have often served as substitutes for real policy changes rather than leading to them. Arab governments can work with the EU as a whole and with member states that have gone beyond symbolic recognition.
The clear conclusion from Orbán’s departure is that a very visible obstacle has gone, but a deeper structural limit has become more visible. The period after Orbán is likely to be calmer, but based on current evidence, it will not bring a real change in EU policy on Palestine.
References
Hawari, Y. and Buttu, D. (2025) Statehood without liberation: Europe’s response to genocide. Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, 14 August. Available at: https://al-shabaka.org/roundtables/statehood-without-liberation-europes-response-to-genocide/
Arab Reform Initiative (2025). ‘Paralyzed into Irrelevance: How Divisions on Palestine Eroded the EU’s Normative Claims’. Available at: https://www.arab-reform.net/publication/paralyzed-into-irrelevance-how-divisions-on-palestine-eroded-the-eus-normative-claims/
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Lovatt, H. (2020). ‘The end of Oslo: A new European strategy on Israel-Palestine’. European Council on Foreign Relations. Available at: https://ecfr.eu/publication/the-end-of-oslo-a-new-european-strategy-on-israel-palestine/
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