[23][32] That August, shortly before his marriage to Dr Anikó Lévai in Szolnok, in September 1986, a police source reported him as affiliated with an organization whose members were lecturing in the United States and West Germany, presenting themselves as "the country's expected future leaders."

They received Western support while also enjoying full protection by the Budapest police (BRFK [hu]) and insider access to top-level government decisions through minister Horváth.

[21][24] After obtaining the higher degree of Juris Doctor[33] in 1987,[34][35] Orbán lived in Szolnok for two years, commuting to his job in Budapest as a sociologist at the Management Training Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food.

[36] In November 1987, at the Lawyers' Special College of Social Sciences, Orbán welcomed a group of 150 delegates from 17 countries to a two-day seminar—backed by the European Network for East–West Dialogue—on the Perestroika, conscientious objection, and the prospects for a pan-European democratic movement.

[54] Orbán became the second youngest prime minister of Hungary at the age of 35 (after András Hegedüs)[55] and the first post-Cold War head of government in both eastern and central Europe who had not previously been a member of a communist party during the Soviet-era.

[62] Two of Orbán's state secretaries in the prime minister's office had to resign in May, due to their implication in a bribery scandal involving the American military manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corporation.

Before bids on a major jet-fighter contract, the two secretaries, along with 32 other deputies of Orbán's party, had sent a letter to two US senators to lobby for the appointment of a Budapest-based Lockheed manager to be the US ambassador to Hungary.

[65] A later report in March by the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists criticized the Hungarian government for improper political influence in the media, as the country's public service broadcaster teetered close to bankruptcy.

[70] Hungary attracted international media attention in 1999 for passing the "status law" concerning estimated three-million ethnic Hungarian minorities in neighbouring Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia and Ukraine.

Romania acquiesced after amendments following a December 2001 agreement between Orbán and Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Năstase;[72] Slovakia accepted the law after further concessions made by the new government after the 2002 elections.

[74] In the event, Orbán's group lost the April parliamentary elections to the opposition Hungarian Socialist Party, which set up a coalition with its longtime ally, the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats.

[100][101] The BBC complained that "there was no formal bidding process for the plant's expansion, and the terms of the loan agreement have not yet been made public," even after the Hungarian parliament approved the deal on 6 February.

Westinghouse and Areva, two Western prime contractors, had been lured since 2012 by the Hungarian civil service but eventually had been frozen out of competition by the Orbán government, who chose to sole-source the deal.

[105] In a speech in July 2014 in Băile Tușnad, a remote village in Romania, at the Bálványos Free Summer University and Student Camp Orbán first publicly articulated an ideology of illiberalism.

"[120][121] On 30 March 2020, the Hungarian parliament voted 137 to 53 in favor of passing legislation that would create a state of emergency without a time limit, grant the prime minister the ability to rule by decree, suspend by-elections, and introduce the possibility of prison sentences for spreading fake news and sanctions for leaving quarantine.

[128][129] The Mathias Corvinus Collegium, a residential college, received an influx of government funds and assets equal to about 1% of Hungary's gross domestic product, reportedly as part of a mission to train future conservative intellectuals.

[135] In July 2020, Orbán expressed that he still expects arguments over linking of disbursement of funds of the European Union to rule-of-law criteria but remarked in a state radio interview that they "didn't win the war, we (they) won an important battle".

[136] In August 2020, Orbán whilst speaking at an event to inaugurate a monument commemorating the Treaty of Trianon, said Central European nations should come together to preserve their Christian roots as western Europe experiments with same-sex families, immigration and atheism.

[206] According to Politico, Orbán's political philosophy "echoes the resentments of what were once the peasant and working classes" by promoting an "uncompromising defense of national sovereignty and a transparent distrust of Europe's ruling establishments".

[244] In 2021, Orbán's government passed a bill which privatized 11 Hungarian universities and subsequently were endowed billions of euros in assets from the state budget, as well as real estate and shares in large companies.

[247] The government also created the Center for Fundamental Rights (Hungarian: Alapjogokért Központ) in 2013 who describe their mission as "preserving national identity, sovereignty and Christian social traditions".

[259] The late professor of economics at Harvard University, János Kornai, described the evolution of the Hungarian state during Orbán's second premiership as having taken a "u-turn" away from the aim of becoming a market economy based on the rule of law and private ownership and instead beginning the "systematic destruction of the fundamental institutions of democracy".

[260]: 34–35  In her 2015 article on Orbán's illiberal democracy, Abby Innes, associate professor of political economy at the London School of Economics simply states that "Hungary can no longer be ranked a democratic country".

[261]: 95  Former minister of education, Bálint Magyar, has stated that elections in Hungary under Orbán are undemocratic and "free but not fair", due to gerrymandering, large-scale control over the media, and suspect funding for political campaigns.

[223] Hungarian political scientist András Körösényi [hu], using Max Weber's classification, argues that Orbán's rule cannot be described simply by the notions of authoritarianisation or illiberalism.

[268] In 2021, his party proposed new legislation to censor any "LGBT+ positive content" in movies, books or public advertisements and to severely restrict sex education in school forbidding any information thought to "encourage gender change or homosexuality".

[269] German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen harshly criticized the law,[270] while a letter from sixteen EU leaders including Pedro Sánchez and Mario Draghi warned against "threats against fundamental rights and in particular the principle of non-discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation".

[292] A 2019 New York Times investigation revealed how Orbán leased plots of farm land to politically connected individuals and supporters of his and his party, thereby channeling disproportionate amounts of the EU's agricultural subsidies Hungary receives every year into the pockets of cronies.

"[296] Hungarian-American business magnate and political activist George Soros criticized Orbán's handling of the European migrant crisis in 2015, saying: "His plan treats the protection of national borders as the objective and the refugees as an obstacle.

[317] In a speech delivered to the 31st Bálványos Free Summer University and Student Camp in July 2022, Orbán expressed views that were later described as "a pure Nazi text" that was "worthy of Goebbels" by one of his senior advisers, Zsuzsa Hegedűs, in her letter of resignation.