The election victory of Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party raises hopes for a long-delayed energy transition in Hungary. However, the road ahead is complex – shaped by Russian oil, gas and nuclear dependency, frozen EU funds, and a new government that is pragmatic rather than progressive.
On 12 April 2026, Hungarian voters delivered a political earthquake. Péter Magyar’s centre-right Tisza party defeated Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz after 16 years in power, ending the longest-running illiberal government in the European Union. For those watching Hungary’s climate and energy trajectory, the result opens a window of cautious hope – but not of unbridled optimism.
The Orbán era left behind a contradictory legacy on energy and the environment. His government set a 2050 net-zero target (which was found not sufficient enough by the Constitutional Court, so the previous Climate Neutrality Law is under revision), phased out coal power (although pushing the final deadline further and further into the future) and presided over a solar energy boom. Yet it also described EU climate ambitions as a ‘utopian fantasy’, repeatedly vetoed or delayed EU-level climate legislation and doubled down on Russian fossil fuels, even after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Hungary became one of the EU's most persistent obstructionists on climate policy – using its veto power in Brussels not as a principled position but as a geopolitical bargaining chip.
The new Tisza government will inherit both the opportunities and the contradictions of that legacy. What can we realistically expect?
A ministry for the environment – after 16 years
One of the most symbolically significant changes is structural. For the first time in 16 years, Hungary will have a dedicated ministry for environmental protection, nature conservation and animal welfare. László Gajdos, who ran a celebrated zoo in Nyíregyháza for three decades and won his parliamentary seat with nearly 65 per cent of the vote, will lead it. His appointment signals that environmental issues will have a seat at the cabinet table – not as an afterthought, but as a portfolio in their own right.
The energy portfolio goes to István Kapitány, a seasoned business leader who built a long international career at Shell before entering politics as Tisza’s energy and economic expert. His profile blends multinational corporate experience with a reform agenda focused on investment confidence and energy strategy modernisation. Together, the two appointments suggest a government that is serious about governance – even if it stops well short of being a green vanguard.
The third player to watch out for is Dávid Vitézy, the minister for transport and investment, who is a technocrat with a rare combination of former civic activism and hands-on institutional experience. A former head of Budapest’s transport authority BKK, where he consolidated the city’s fragmented public transit into a single integrated network, Vitézy is widely regarded as one of the few Hungarian politicians with deep, system-level knowledge of transport and infrastructure. Magyar has charged him with a demanding mandate: leading the national railway company MÁV out of its current crisis and using regained EU funds to launch what Magyar called a second golden age of Hungarian rail. His portfolio is directly relevant to the energy transition – railway electrification and a modal shift away from road transport are central pillars of Hungary’s decarbonisation path. Vitézy’s prior proximity to Fidesz circles has drawn scrutiny, but his stated intention to do ‘professional rather than political work’ in the role suggests a reformer with a concrete agenda rather than a party loyalist. His success or failure in unlocking EU infrastructure funds and reversing a decade of underinvestment will be one of the new government’s earliest and most visible tests.
The Tisza party’s 243-page election manifesto lays out an ambitious agenda. It pledges to double the share of renewable energy in domestic supply by 2040, lift the longstanding ban on wind turbine construction, support geothermal energy and invest around HUF 1,000 billion (roughly EUR 2,8 billion) – largely from unlocked EU funds – into home insulation, energy efficiency and grid modernisation. It also commits to railway electrification and large-scale water retention infrastructure to tackle Hungary’s worsening drought crisis.
Unlocking the frozen billions
Perhaps the most immediate and consequential issue is money. Under Orbán, Hungary forfeited access to billions of euros in EU funds due to rule-of-law and anti-corruption concerns. Some EUR 9,5 billion earmarked for Hungary's Recovery and Resilience Plan – much of it designated for the green transition – remains frozen, with a hard disbursement deadline of August 2026.
Both Magyar’s team and EU officials have made unlocking these funds an explicit priority. Full compliance with EU conditionality will be essential in the government’s first weeks, and experts are cautiously optimistic that a cooperative Hungarian government can move quickly enough to access at least a portion of the funds before the deadline. This matters enormously: the Tisza manifesto’s green investment promises are largely predicated on EU financing.
Beyond the recovery funds, the new government will also need to navigate ETS2 – the EU’s new carbon pricing mechanism for buildings, transport and other sectors not covered by the original Emissions Trading System, due to launch in 2028. Hungary is among the EU Member States most exposed to the affordability risks of higher fossil fuel prices. Orbán’s government did little to prepare for this, and the question of how Magyar will balance the EU’s decarbonisation agenda with domestic energy cost concerns remains very much open.
Wind, solar and the battery paradox
The carbon dioxide emissions of Hungary's electricity mix are already remarkably low, especially if we compare it to other countries in the Visegrád Group, such as Poland or Czechia: roughly three-quarters comes from low-carbon sources, split between nuclear power (from the Paks plant) and a fast-growing solar sector. What has been conspicuously absent is wind energy, after a Fidesz-era law effectively banned new turbines. The Tisza manifesto explicitly commits to lifting this restriction. According to a study by the REKK Foundation, the economic potential of wind power is 16 gigawatt – while the official policy target is only 1 gigawatt by 2030.
More complicated is the legacy of Hungary’s battery manufacturing boom. Spurred by government subsidies and lax regulation, Chinese, South Korean and Japanese-owned battery factories have proliferated across the country, creating thousands of jobs but also generating serious environmental and public health concerns. Protests erupted in the run-up to the election over groundwater contamination, toxic emissions and illegal waste. Tisza has promised greater transparency, stricter environmental enforcement and independent oversight, pledging that ‘investments cannot endanger people's health’. How firmly these commitments will be applied to existing facilities, and to future investment decisions, will be an early test of the new government’s resolve.
The battery paradox points to a broader challenge: Hungary needs to accelerate its green transition in an environment where parts of that transition have already lost public trust. The new government inherits not only Orbán’s policy failures, but also a degree of public scepticism towards industrial-scale green investment.
The Russian energy knot
The thorniest issue of all is Russian energy dependency. Hungary remains one of the most Russia-dependent countries in the EU: in 2024, around 74 per cent of its gas and 48 per cent of its oil came from Russia. Orbán blocked EU sanctions, negotiated pipeline exemptions and actively deepened energy ties with Moscow, even as the rest of Europe sought to diversify.
The Tisza manifesto commits to eliminating Russian energy dependence by 2035 – a meaningful pledge, but one that trails the EU’s own REPowerEU deadline for phasing out Russian pipeline gas by 2027. Magyar has acknowledged the tension, stating publicly that Hungary ‘cannot change geography’ and that Russia will remain a close energy neighbour. His position is that diversification should be pursued as rapidly as feasible, but without reckless disruption to energy security – particularly in the context of ongoing instability caused by the conflict in the Middle East and its effects on global energy markets.
Hungary’s nuclear plant at Paks – which also relies on Russian fuel and technology – adds another layer of complexity. The Tisza manifesto says the new government will explore sourcing nuclear fuel from US or French suppliers and investigate the possibility of small modular reactors. These are sensible long-term directions, but they will take time, money and geopolitical navigation to realise.
A pragmatic reset, not a progressive pivot
How much will really change? The Tisza party is aligned with the European People’s Party in the European Parliament, a grouping that has itself been instrumental in watering down Green Deal ambitions in recent years. Hungary is unlikely to emerge as a climate leader in the EU; it is more likely to become a constructive, if cautious participant.
What will change is tone and orientation. The ideological reflex to oppose whatever Brussels proposes – the defining feature of Orbán’s EU posture on climate – will be gone. Hungary will stop being a veto-wielding spoiler in EU climate negotiations. That, in itself, is no small thing. An unblocked EU can move faster on climate; a Hungary that unlocks its green transition funds and starts investing in efficiency, renewables and water management will begin to close a real gap with its European partners.
The appointment of a dedicated environment minister, the lifting of wind restrictions, the commitment to EU compliance and the promise of independent environmental institutions – these are genuine signals of change. Whether they translate into durable policy transformation will depend on implementation capacity, political will in the face of competing economic pressures and how Hungary navigates its still-deep entanglement with Russian energy.
Hungary’s energy transition after Orbán will not be a revolution – and outside observers should be careful not to mistake the nature of this election for something it was not. While much of Europe watched the April vote with intense interest, hoping for a decisive pro-climate signal from Budapest, the Hungarian electorate was largely not casting a ballot on energy policy. This was, above all, a referendum on the Orbán regime itself: on 16 years of democratic backsliding, corruption and the steady hollowing-out of public institutions. When Hungarians rank their priorities, it is the cost of living, healthcare and education that consistently top the list – not the green transition. Magyar won not because he promised a cleaner future, but because he promised a functioning state.
The views and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union | Global Dialogue.
