Since our country’s accession to the European Union in 2004, Hungary can elect and send representatives to the European Parliament for the fifth time this year.
Looking at the results of the last four elections, it is clear that Fidesz won the EP elections every time, regardless of whether it entered the voting as an opposition party or as a governing party.
In 2004, with a 38.5 percent turnout at the time of our accession, Fidesz won 12 mandates in the election with nearly one and a half million votes, while MSZP, as the ruling party at the time, was able to send a total of nine representatives to the European Parliament.
The since-defunct SZDSZ and MDF also gained mandates, the liberals got two representatives and Dávid Ibolyá’s got one representative in the EP for the first time.
That year, the MIÉP founded by István Csurka, the Social Democratic Party, the Labor Party, and the Hungarian People’s Welfare Association (MNSZ) led by Albert Szabó did not receive enough support from the voters.
Fidesz was also the largest opposition party
Although after the fiasco of 2004 it seemed that the MSZP could get back on its feet, and in 2006 Ferenc Gyurcsány was able to win the parliamentary elections by lying throughout the campaign, three years later they could no longer avoid their fate.
The 2009 EU elections were the most successful for Fidesz so far, Viktor Orbán’s party won 14 seats in the European Parliament with 1.6 million votes with more than 56.3 percent support, while
the Socialists, who governed at the time with Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai, could send only four representatives to the EP instead of nine, obtaining only 17.3 percent of the votes.
The national radical Jobbik took part in the EP elections for the first time in 2009, because the party was so opposed to our joining the organization that it did not run in the elections in 2004 in protest. Five years later, however, it immediately won three mandates, while MDF, which was the last to participate in the work of the EP, bagged one more seat. This year, the SZDSZ did not, and the LMP did not yet succeed in the EU voting.
It remained popular even as a governing party
The 2014 election saw a record low turnout, with only 28.97 percent of eligible voters voting.
Fidesz, which was already in power at the time, still won the EU election in Hungary with a towering 12 mandates, while the opposition parties shared nine representative seats.
The decline of the MSZP did not stop, the socialists won only two mandates, while Jobbik could once again send three representatives to the union. This year saw the debut of DK led by Ferenc Gyurcsány with three representatives, as well as LMP and Együtt-PM with one representative each.
The most recent EP election in 2019 saw the highest participation rate so far, with 43.48 percent of eligible voters voting.
Fidesz set a record again this year, the party received more than 1.8 million votes (52 percent), so it was able to send 13 representatives to the European Parliament.
The DK won four mandates, and the MSZP was only able to send a single politician in collaboration with Párbeszéd. The popular partisanship of Jobbik also took its revenge, the party lost two mandates compared to the 2014 election, but Momentum entered the scene and won two seats.
In this year’s election on June 9, according to analysts’ predictions, Jobbik and MSZP may be eliminated from the European Parliament, Momentum may lose a mandate, but Mi Hazánk Mozgalom and the Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party may also gain seats. Fidesz-KDNP is also a towering candidate for the EP elections this year, and the opposition parties would probably be successful if they could reduce the support of the governing parties below fifty percent.
Cover photo: The meeting hall of the European Parliament in Brussels (Photo: MTI/EPA/Olivier Hoslet)
