2009 European Parliament election in Hungary


The European Parliament election of 2009 in Hungary was the election of the delegation from Hungary to the European Parliament in 2009. Hungary delegated 22 members to the European Parliament based on the Nice treaty and the election took place on 7 June.

Candidates

Among the candidates that ran were:
The election in Hungary took place according to the 2003 CXIII. law about European election and the 1997 C. election law. According to this the country consists of a single election district and those parties will be put on the ballot who could collect 20,000 proposal coupons. Eight qualified lists were approved by Hungarian authorities to be put on the ballot, of which two of them were shared lists. Fidesz shared its party list with the Christian Democratic People's Party to create a joint Fidesz-KDNP list, and Politics Can Be Different shared its party list with the Humanist Party to create a joint LMP-HP list.

Opinion polls

Results

Party list results by county

The European Parliament elections' biggest winners were the centre-right opposition Fidesz party, which won 56.4% of the vote and 14 seats. The far-right Jobbik party also performed stronger than expected. The Hungarian Democratic Forum also gained 1 seat, the former finance minister Lajos Bokros can travel to Brussels.
The liberal Alliance of Free Democrats was almost wiped off the political map, attracting only 60,000 votes or 2.2%, compared to more than a million in the country's first free elections 19 years ago.

List of seat winners

On the Fidesz Party list:
  1. Pál Schmitt
  2. József Szájer
  3. Kinga Gál
  4. János Áder
  5. László Surján
  6. Tamás Deutsch
  7. Lívia Járóka
  8. György Schöpflin
  9. András Gyürk
  10. Csaba Őry
  11. Béla Glattfelder
  12. Ádám Kósa
  13. Ágnes Hankiss
  14. Enikő Győri
On the Hungarian Socialist Party list:
  1. Kinga Göncz
  2. Edit Herczog
  3. Zita Gurmai
  4. Csaba Tabajdi
On the Jobbik Party list:
  1. Krisztina Morvai
  2. Zoltán Balczó
  3. Csanád Szegedi
On the Hungarian Democratic Forum Party list:
  1. Lajos Bokros

    Consequences

Party leader Gábor Fodor announced that he will offer his resignation in case his party will not reach the 5% limit needed for representation in the European Parliament. After the election results were published Fodor repeated his statement promising to offer his resignation to the party congress the following day. The election result ultimately caused mass resignations including Fodor in the leadership of SZDSZ and internal turmoil in the party. The election results prompted an intense debate about the future of the party in MSZP as well.