Jacques Rupnik, a political scientist at CERI-Sciences Po in Paris, told TVP World’s On the Record that Poland’s Donald Tusk “may have some advice” to give to Magyar on doing exactly that. The Polish and Hungarian PMs met on Wednesday during Magyar’s landmark three-day tour of Poland just weeks after he ended veteran conservative Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule at the ballot box. For around two-and-a-half years, Tusk’s centrist coalition has been grappling with the challenges of reshaping the state following the eight-year dominance of the Orbán-allied Law and Justice (PiS) party. “In Poland, it was not such a long period, but in Hungary it certainly was –16 years,” Rupnik said. “So that is the question: can you dismantle that legacy? And how can you dismantle an illiberal legacy without using illiberal means?” ‘Orbán experiment’ over Whether Magyar succeeds in transforming Hungary or not, the type of politics his predecessor helped flourish across Europe and beyond is far from dead, Rupnik said. “Well, it’s over for the Orbán experiment, but it's not over for nationalist and populist movements,” Rupnik said, pointing to Orbán’s ties with Slovakia’s Robert Fico and Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš – as well as PiS chair Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland. Orbán’s defeat, Rupnik argued, is a setback for the idea that Europe’s nationalist right could draw power from Donald Trump’s return to the White House. He said MAGA had hoped to build a shared front with European allies opposed to the rule of law and a stronger European Union. But association with Trump may no longer be an asset, Rupnik said. European voters, he argued, increasingly see the EU as a shield against Russia’s war in Ukraine, instability to the south and an unpredictable US. Central Europe looks east Rupnik said Magyar’s wish to revive cooperation with Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia could give the four-country Visegrad Group new relevance, though not in its original post-1989 form. A future Central European alignment, Rupnik said, would have to include a common position on supporting Kyiv. In the longer term, Ukraine may become part of the region’s political identity. “Central Europe, it used to be the kidnaped West, as Milan Kundera said. Well, now it would have to expand eastwards to include Ukraine,” Rupnik said. “So we have a new concept of Central Europe, which would include Ukraine as well. This is new mental geography in the making.”