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A roundup of ways to celebrate Black History Month in February.

Viktor Orbán’s long grip on Hungary may end after the 12 April elections, but the political model he refined inside the EU is not necessarily receding with him. A similar governing playbook – sovereigntist in tone, centralising in instinct and sceptical of liberal institutions – is now taking clearer shape in Bulgaria around former president Rumen Radev. Having stepped down early from his second term, Radev is preparing an entry into party politics with ambitions for executive power. If successful, Brussels may soon discover that the “Orbán problem” is not ending, but relocating. A defining moment came with Radev’s first speech after leaving the presidency. Participants at the Sofia Economic Forum saw a Bulgarian politician on the rise who spoke with marked approval of the economic and industrial policies of Russia and China, while also echoing the logic of Donald Trump’s isolationist strategies. For years, Radev operated from the presidency as a figure formally above day-to-day politics, yet deeply embedded in Bulgaria’s power struggles. Unlike Orbán, who built dominance through a disciplined party machine, Radev cultivated influence by presenting himself as a corrective to the party system itself. He is portraying parties as compromised, exhausted and incapable of governing. In a country that has held eight elections in five years and cycled through nine governments, only three of them regular cabinets, that message has found a receptive audience. The political terrain Orbán once used in Hungary with it’s institutional fatigue, distrust of elites and a promise to restore national direction, and now this exists in Bulgaria in even more acute form. Institutional power, not ideology The key parallel between Orbán and Radev is not ideological branding but institutional intent. Orbán’s consolidation of power began when a parliamentary supermajority allowed him to rewrite Hungary’s constitutional architecture, bringing the judiciary, media regulation and key oversight bodies under lasting political influence. The European Parliament later described the system that emerged as a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy”. Radev has signalled ambitions that point in a similar direction. He has long spoken of constitutional change and now openly links his political future to judicial reform. In Bulgaria, however, judicial reform is not merely a governance issue; it is a question of control over the concrete institutions and ultimately the Supreme judicial council — who appoints the judges and chief prosecutor. A parliamentary majority large enough to reshape the Supreme Judicial Council would also shape the selection of the next chief prosecutor, one of the most powerful figures in Bulgaria’s institutional landscape. Previous reformist coalitions collapsed over this very issue. Radev appears to believe he can succeed where party governments failed – an ambition that, if realised, would place long-term leverage over the state’s coercive instruments in political hands aligned with him. This is precisely the institutional lever Orbán mastered. Populism without labels Where Orbán openly champions “illiberal democracy”, Radev avoids ideological labels altogether. He declines to position himself as left, right or centre, a classic populist strategy designed to widen electoral reach while reducing accountability to a defined programme. Yet his rhetoric consistently follows the template common to Europe’s sovereigntist current: emphasis on national identity, suspicion of liberal elites, and the claim that existing political intermediaries no longer represent “the people”. Since opposing the Istanbul Convention in 2018 on the grounds of protecting children and national values, his cultural positioning has been clear even if formally unacknowledged. The message is less about doctrine than about authority: the state has been captured by oligarchic interests, parties are discredited, and only a leadership claiming direct legitimacy from the nation can restore order. Orbán used the same argument to justify centralisation. The language differs; the logic does not. Executive power and the EU Radev’s record during Bulgaria’s prolonged political crisis further illustrates this governing instinct. Through a succession of caretaker governments appointed by the presidency, the executive branch expanded its role well beyond organising elections. Senior security officials were replaced, and long-term strategic decisions, including a 13-year energy agreement with Turkey’s BOTAŞ, were taken with limited parliamentary oversight and little transparency. Such moves are not directly linked to Hungary, but they reflect the same governing philosophy Orbán advanced: strategic state decisions framed as matters of national interest, taken through the executive, with scrutiny presented as obstruction. For the EU, this matters less at the level of rhetoric and more at the level of alignment. On Russia’s war against Ukraine, Radev has repeatedly criticised military support for Kyiv and warned that arms deliveries risk dragging Bulgaria into the conflict. Like Orbán, he frames sanctions as harmful to national interests and argues for a rapid end to the war through political means. While he has been more cautious than the Hungarian prime minister in direct clashes with Brussels, the underlying positioning is similar: national calculation takes precedence over collective European strategy. A second sovereignist pole? Orbán long functioned as the EU’s internal enemy, a leader willing to test the limits of the Union’s tolerance for democratic backsliding. If Radev translates presidential popularity into strong parliamentary power, Brussels could face a more complex scenario: not an isolated case, but a second system-level actor operating within the same political grammar. That would not mean identical regimes. Bulgaria’s institutions, party fragmentation and economic structure differ significantly from Hungary’s. But the direction – concentration of authority justified through national legitimacy, institutional redesign framed as reform, and selective alignment with EU policies – would be familiar. For European policymakers, the issue is no longer whether Orbán’s model is eroding the Union. It already does. The question is to what extent Orbán’s bad example is contagious. Caption: Bulgarian President Rumen Radev (R) welcomes Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban during their meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria, 20 December 2024. EPA/VASSIL DONEV

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