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Hungary’s Viktator

Vendeline von Bredow: European business and finance correspondent, The Economist, BERLIN

Viktor Orban will hold on to the extraordinary powers he seized to fight the
coronavirus

Hungary (and Orban) first

2021 in brief

Portugal holds presidential elections in January. The incumbent, Marcelo Rebelo de
Sousa, a former leader of the centre-right opposition, is the strong favourite to win.
Portugal’s president is more than just a figurehead, having the power to dissolve
parliament

THE START of 2021 will be difficult for Hungary. After a relatively mild first

wave of the covid-19 pandemic in spring 2020, the country’s second wave,

which started in the late summer, brought a much higher rate of infections as

well as more fatalities. The economy will be in the doldrums as the new year

dawns. And yet the prime minister, Viktor Orban, will be more firmly in the

saddle than at any time since he returned to power in 2010.