Orban was a self-confessed “thorn” in the side of the EU leadership who regularly clashed with other government heads.
But Magyar, whose party, routed Orban in a general election on Sunday has vowed to dismantle the nationalist administration and repair relations with the EU so it will unfreeze billions of dollars of EU funds for the central European country.
Orban could have attended a final gathering in Cyprus next week before officially handing over power to Magyar in early May. He decided to skip the chance however.
“Prime Minister Viktor Orban will not attend the informal meeting of EU heads of state and government on April 23–24 due to his duties related to the handover of government,” Hungary’s EU minister Janos Boka wrote on Facebook.
His decision means he will avoid a showdown over his continued veto of a 90-billion-euro loan for Ukraine.
That move was the latest in a raft of decisions by Orban — an ally of US President Donald Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin — that infuriated Brussels.
Orban’s 16 years in power saw numerous long nights at EU summits when he was repeatedly accused of blackmailing the bloc by holding up agreements to get his way on other issues.
The EU froze aid to Hungary over Orban’s perceived democratic backsliding.
Following Magyar’s triumph, EU officials will visit Hungary Friday for talks with the incoming government, the EU said.
EU talks
“These are preliminary talks that are taking place in order to make sure that once the government is in place, really, action can be taken if appropriate, and that we do not waste any time,” said EU spokeswoman Paula Pinho.
Magyar’s “regime change” gathered pace when the conservative Tisza party leader said he will not use the office in a monastery towering over Budapest that was Orban’s seat of power.
“Under the TISZA government, the prime minister’s office will not be located in the Carmelite Palace, but in a ministry building near the parliament,” Magyar said in a Facebook post.
Orban moved his office from near parliament to the Carmelite Monastery in Budapest’s historic Castle Quarter in 2019.
Critics decried the cost of the renovation and the security built up around the former cultural centre overlooking the Danube that the government appropriated in 2014.
Orban often hosted foreign leaders in the Carmelite, accompanied by severe restrictions on pedestrians in the surrounding historic district.
Magyar has also vowed to suspend news coverage by state-run outlets that opponents said had become an Orban mouthpiece.
Staff of the MTI national news agency demanded the restoration of “editorial autonomy,” in a letter seen by AFP on Thursday, with one editor saying they “had enough of unlawful, external political interference”.
Leaked emails seen by AFP show that MTI was tightly controlled during Orban’s rule. News items related to Orban’s flagship policies or his foreign allies required special approval from top editors.
“We demand that the Hungarian news agency’s independent, impartial and professionally based news service be restored immediately,” read the staff letter, addressed to managers on Wednesday.