Hungary’s incoming prime minister, Péter Magyar, is pledging to oversee a broad anti-corruption campaign once in office, including the creation of new watchdog bodies and investigations of government contracts. But undoing the government built over the course of Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule may be no easy task. 

At a press conference outlining his agenda, the newly-elected Magyar said his government would adopt “zero tolerance” for the misuse of public money and establish two new agencies: an Anti-Corruption Office, which would focus on prevention and shielding law enforcement from partisan pressure, and a National Asset Recovery and Protection Office to coordinate complex financial investigations, OCCRP reported. 

The new asset recovery office will examine disputed real estate deals, suspicious concession contracts, and all public procurements above $32 million, according to the news outlet, according to Magyar, who has pledged to have his anti-corruption campaign fully operational by June. He said the effort would be funded by redirecting resources from the Orbán government’s Office for the Protection of Sovereignty, OCCRP reported.

Magyar is separately seeking to start Hungary’s accession process to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, the EU body responsible for investigating fraud involving European funds. Magyar said that process could take at least six months, the news agency said. 

In assessing Orbán’s government, Magyar has not shied away from sharp criticism, likening the outgoing administration to a “criminal organization” and alleging that “shredders are working full time at ministries and other institutions,” The Times reported. Magyar singled out outgoing Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, alleging he was destroying documents linked to sanctions and calling for him to be investigated for treason. 

Hungary became a “captured state” during Orbán’s time in office, and the country has been “robbed, betrayed, and destroyed” by the Orban government, Magyar asserted. “Now we want to see what the robbers left behind,” he said in comments cited by the newspaper. 

The scale of Magyar’s parliamentary victory may prove critical to whether he can follow through on his promises, The Times said. The two-thirds majority won by his TISZA party could allow him to remove Orbán-era appointees from senior state posts if they tried to obstruct the new government, according to the report.

But analysts who spoke to The Times said Magyar must now dismantle the “party-state” set up by Orbán to give his Fidesz party control over state intuitions. Failing to do so could put Magyar in a position analogous to that of Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, whose administration was weakened via political wrangling by the former ruling PiS party, according to the report.

Among the targets identified by Magyar and outside analysts cited by The Times are public messaging bodies used to attack Orbán’s political enemies, an allegedly overpriced highway toll contract tied to businessman Lőrinc Mészáros, and state-backed institutions such as Mathias Corvinus Collegium, which the paper said promoted Orbán’s populist ideology and received substantial state support, including a stake in the oil and gas company MOL. 

Magyar said state funding for such institutions would end and that the mixing of party financing with government expenditure would be investigated.

“We are ready to eliminate industrial-scale corruption,” Magyar said, according to OCCRP.

Read more at OCCRP

Read more at The Times