After the national elections in April, a calmness overcame the country's politics, strange because the European elections were coming only six weeks later. A fast-paced, boisterous campaign should have been inevitable. Ideally, the topics might have been about European political questions, but - as usual - the issues are rather more domestic, Hungarian issues, questions that have some chance of motivating Hungarian voters.
On the one hand, the calmness is not surprising. The Orbán Government has remained in power. There is no need for coalition talks, and after all, the proportion in the Hungarian parliament of the governing center-right, the radical right and the left after the April elections remains almost the same as it was during the last four years.
On the other hand, however, there is one big question important to this post-campaign campaign: the state of the political left. More precisely: the competition among the left-liberal parties, who are not running in coalition this time. For Hungary's parties on the left, the European Parliamentary elections are treated as a proving ground. Who will gain in popularity and who will decline, following the humiliating defeat in April? The contenders are many, including: the Socialists, the grand old party on the left; the Együtt-PM (Together-Dialogue for Hungary) party of the former, technocratic Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai; the small but loud and radical leftist party DK (Democratic Coalition) of the ex-leftist leader and former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány; and then the outsider, the green-left-liberal LMP (Politics Can Be Different), which refused to join the unity coalition of the leftist opposition for the national parliamentary elections.