Viktor Orbán

Biography

He studied English language in high school, from where he graduated in 1981. In 1981 and 1982 he completed his military service, then he studied law at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. He graduated in 1987. In the following two years he lived in Szolnok but commuted to Budapest where he was working as a sociologist for the Management Training Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food.

Viktor Orbán is married to jurist Anikó Lévai. They have five children. He is very fond of sport, especially of soccer.

Political career

Mr Orbán was a founding member of the Fidesz (Federation of Young Democrats), which was formed on 30 March 1988. On 16 June 1989, Mr Orbán gave a speech at Heroes' Square, Budapest, on the occasion of the reburial of Imre Nagy and other national martyrs of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. In his speech he demanded free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops. The speech brought him wide national and political acclaim. In the summer of 1989 he took part in the Opposition Roundtable negotiations.

In 1989 Mr Orbán received a scholarship from the Soros Foundation and spent a year in Oxford where he studied at Pembroke College.

In 1990 he became a member of the Hungarian parliament and leader of the Fidesz, which was transformed from a radical student movement into a conservative right-wing party under his direction. In 1995 the party changed its name to Fidesz-MPP (Federation of Young Democrats & Hungarian Civic Party). The party won the 1998 parliamentary elections (the third one since the end of Socialist era) and Mr Orbán became the youngest Prime Minister of Hungary, serving between 1998 and 2002. In March 1999 he signed the deed of accession establishing Hungary´s membership of NATO.

He was awarded the Freedom Award of the American Enterprises Institute and the New Atlantic Initiative (2001), the Polak Award (2001), the Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit (2001), the "Förderpreis Soziale Marktwirtschaft" (Price for the Social Market Economy, 2002) and the Mérite Européen prize (2004).

Nationalism and controversies

Viktor Orbán is also an outspoken nationalist. He has been campaigning for years on the basis of nationalistic Hungarian values that originate greatly in the Hungarian irredentism. Under his mandate, Hungary amended the status law extending special economic, social and cultural benefits to ethnic Hungarians in neighbouring states (Romania, Slovakia, Croatia and Ukraine), who had objected to the law. Romania engaged in a diplomatic battle at the European Commission for Democracy Through Law (Venice Commission) in 2001. Romania has successfully made its case as the Venice Commission has criticised the Hungarian initiative. However, this did not prevent Hungary from trying to put into practice the ideas behind the bill before and after Orban's mandate ended.

The image of Viktor Orbán in the neighbouring states is controversial as he performs frequent "private" visits. Romanians, Slovaks and Croatians accuse him of participating in an attempt to create a distinct national conscience among the ethnic Hungarians who live outside Hungary. The perceptions of his actions among ethnic Hungarians from neighbouring countries are mixed. However, the non-Hungarians resent his actions often with indignation.

In a speech in the European Parliament in 2002, he demanded that the Czech Republic and Slovakia should repeal the Benes decrees before being allowed into the European Union. The "decrees" was the basis for the brutal ethnic cleansing of Germans and Hungarians from these countries after World War II.

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