Jobbik

 ( 2003 Establishments In Hungary ) 

The party's 2009 election slogan "Hungary belongs to the Hungarians" ( Magyarország a Magyaroké!) attracted much scrutiny. While some critics dismissed the slogan as a tautology, others considered it a call to bigotry and complained to the National Electoral Commission, which ruled it "unconstitutional" on the eve of the election.

On 11 March 2014, in response to a demonstration in Târgu Mureș, the president Traian Băsescu publicly called for a ban on Jobbik members from entering Romania.

Besides defending the rights of ethnic Hungarians living abroad, Jobbik actively supports the cultural autonomy and language rights of the autochthonous ethnic minorities living in Hungary.

The party has a pragmatic stance on cooperation among the nations and states and, despite historical differences, strongly supports their common action within the EU. Jobbik leaders have called for action in the framework of the Wage Union European Citizens' Initiative.

Around Christmas 2003, Jobbik conducted a nationwide programme of erecting crosses, to remind Hungarians of the "true meaning" of the holiday. The move was criticized by several Christian intellectual groups.

However, the alliance won only 2.2% of the votes, and Jobbik largely withdrew from it. In 2009 the State Audit Office (ÁSZ) reported the alliance for grave breaches of accounting rules. Jobbik blamed MIÉP alone for the irregularities.

Jobbik fought the 2010 and 2014 general elections without political allies. In 2016, there were rumours that some unnamed influential figures were considering a coalition between the left-liberal parties and Jobbik to challenge the Fidesz government; however Jobbik rejected the idea of cooperating with any other political party. Nevertheless, Gábor Vona said in an interview that "We will need several bridges ... to voters on the left, not to parties on the left. Jobbik offers a message, a program both to former leftist and former rightist voters."

In June 2007, Gábor Vona – supported by the party – founded and registered an organisation called Magyar Gárda ("Hungarian Guard"). Its deed of foundation declared that it intended to become "part or core" of a national guard, to be set up in accordance with the Gabriel Bethlen programme, and to participate actively "in strengthening national self-defence" and "maintaining public order". Additional goals included supporting and organising social and charity missions, disaster prevention and civil defence. The foundation of the Guard caused fierce political debate.

On 10 March 2008, three leading figures resigned from the party: founding president Dávid Kovács, committee chairman Ervin Nagy, and former ethics committee chairman Márton Fári. They named the Hungarian Guard as the cause of their resignation, stating that "Jobbik has been merged inseparably with the Guard, taking responsibility for something that it cannot really control in the long run".

On 2 July 2009 the Metropolitan Court of Appeal ( Fővárosi Ítélőtábla) disbanded the Hungarian Guard Movement because the court held that its activities attacked the minority rights guaranteed by the Constitution of Hungary. The Guard has attempted to reorganize itself as a civil service association, the Magyar Gárda Foundation, engaged in cultural and nation building activities rather than politics. Its renewed activities are opposed by the Hungarian authorities and prosecutors claim that the founding of the new organization is in contempt of previous court rulings.

After several schisms, the organization has largely ceased activity. On 28 January 2017 some radical members of the Magyar Gárda held a demonstration against Gábor Vona outside Jobbik's year-opening event. Participants denounced the new politics of Jobbik as a betrayal of the right wing.

In 2016, the party pursued its strategy of de-demonization by abandoning parts of its original ideology and excluding certain extremist elements. The aim was to make its image more respectable and present a credible opposition to the conservative government of Viktor Orbán. Despite Jobbik's pledges, particularly to the Jewish community in Hungary, many left-wing intellectuals and political figures say they want to keep their distance from an organization deemed as undemocratic. Others, on the other hand – including philosopher Ágnes Heller – consider it necessary to ally with all opposition parties, including Jobbik, to defeat Orbán's Fidesz. Heller says that Jobbik has never been a neo-Nazi party, although she described them as far-right and racist. At the local level, however, implicit alliances were formed between left-wing parties and Jobbik in partial municipal elections to defeat the ruling-government party.

Although the party was commonly described as far-right by observers and in the international press, from the mid-2010s it became more difficult to classify Jobbik in those terms because of its policy changes and Fidesz's increasingly right-wing rhetoric.

Support for Jobbik is particularly strong among young people. Since 2014, the party has consciously tried to attract young people who are disappointed with other political parties. An international survey, conducted in 2016, found that 53 percent of Hungarians aged between 18 and 35 years would vote for Jobbik. However, Jobbik's strategy — moving away from its far-right roots and staking out a more centrist position — has resulted in the emergence of more radical dissident formations, like the new party Force and Determination and Our Homeland Movement.

Sneider's rival for the leadership of the party, László Toroczkai, received 46.2% of the votes. He threatened to split the party unless it returned to its original policies. His platform included an end to immigration, stemming emigration of Hungarian youth to the wealthier west of the EU, a tough line on Hungary's Roma minority, and support for ethnic Hungarian minorities in neighboring states. When his proposals were rejected, Toroczkai formed a new party with Dóra Dúró: Our Homeland Movement.

On 7 November 2018 László Toroczkai announced that three former Jobbik politicians – István Apáti, Erik Fülöp and János Volner – had joined Our Homeland Movement. In 2019, he reorganized the Magyar Gárda and made it part of the Our Homeland Movement.

On 12 December 2018 the Hungarian Parliament adopted an amendment to the Overtime Act (Often called "Slave Law" by the opposition) on a scandalous session. On this day, representatives of Jobbik, MSZP, LMP, DK and Dialogue in the National Assembly disrupted the legislation by hesitating, shouting, broadcasting and preventing the presidential pulpit from obstructing the vote. Following the parliamentary meeting, mass protests began all over the country, where Jobbik is participating together with the other opposition parties. Following the demonstrations, left-wing politicians, including the President of the Hungarian Socialist Party Bertalan Tóth, suggested that opposition parties, including Jobbik, should run on a common list at the European Parliament elections.

Jobbik participated in the 2019 European Parliament election as a separate list. In these elections the party lost more than half of its support. These elections likely further motivated the party to collaborate with other groupings in the opposition. In the 2019 local elections the party in most parts of Hungary joined common lists with MSZP, DK, Dialogue and Momentum (in some cases, with local parties as well). Due to this, Jobbik candidates (who stood as independents) managed to win mayorships in Eger and Dunaújváros or more easily retained ones it held before (e.g. Törökszentmiklós).

On 25 January 2020, Péter Jakab was elected president of the party. He received more than 87 percent of the votes.

During the 2022 Hungarian parliamentary election Jobbik participated in the opposition alliance United for Hungary. Viktor Orbán's Fidesz won the election, acquiring two-thirds majority in the parliament again. Some analysts claimed that the majority of Jobbik voters turned out for Fidesz or Our Homeland Movement instead of the united opposition. Prime minister candidate of the alliance, Péter Márki-Zay shared this assessment, admitting that the united opposition may have lost up to "two thirds" of Jobbik voters.

By the summer of the same year, MEP Márton Gyöngyösi won the party's leadership contest.

On 6 June 2023, Ágnes Kunhalmi announced that Jobbik left from the United for Hungary alliance.

, Jobbik had ties to the Conservative People's Party of Estonia, the Bulgarian United Patriots, the Latvian National Alliance, the Polish National Movement, the Indian Bharatiya Janata Party, the Russian Rodina, and the Turkish Nationalist Movement Party, although these connections began tapering off as the party moderated its platform and far-right factions began to split off.

Jobbik has proposed joining the European People's Party, but was rejected in August 2018.

Jobbik joined the European Christian Political Party in April 2024. Márton Gyöngyösi has been an individual member of ECPM since September 2023.

Her supporters, however, claimed that though she certainly had a record of being critical of the state of Israel given a sympathy for the Palestinian cause she developed while working as an international human rights lawyer, the idea of Morvai being an antisemite was "simply ridiculous", given that at the time of her alleged remarks she was married to a Hungarian of Jewish origin, with whom she had three children.

In a newsletter published by a group calling itself "The trade union of Hungarian police officers prepared for action", the following was allegedly printed: "Given our current situation, anti-Semitism is not just our right, but it is the duty of every Hungarian homeland lover, and we must prepare for armed battle against the Jews." The editor of the union, Judit Szima, was a Jobbik candidate in the upcoming election for the European Union parliament. Haaretz alleged that Szima "didn't see anything wrong with the content of the article." Cooperation between Jobbik and the trade union led by Szima was dismantled in 2010 and since then there has been no affiliation between them.

During spring 2012, Jobbik representative in Hungarian parliament Zsolt Baráth caused an outrage by commemorating 1882 blood libel against the Jews in Parliament. The Tiszaeszlár blood libel, found later to be unrelated to Jews, was known as the first major anti-Jewish event in modern Hungary, predating the Holocaust. Baráth's speech caused controversy among Jobbik MPs: some – despite finding it inappropriate and uncalled-for – stated that in a mature democracy there should not be taboo topics, while leaders of the Jobbik Parliamentary Group told the media that they had evaluated the speech and learnt the lesson that they should care more about what their MPs say. After the incident, Baráth was not re-elected and is no longer an MP of Jobbik.

In November 2012, while evaluating the latest news on the controversial Israeli military action in the Gaza strip, the party's deputy parliamentary leader, Márton Gyöngyösi, stated in his speech in the Parliament: "I think such a conflict makes it timely to tally up people of Jewish ancestry who live here, especially in the Hungarian Parliament and the Hungarian government, who, indeed, pose a national security risk to Hungary." Gyöngyösi admitted immediately after his speech that he had composed his sentence wrongly, and that he meant to refer to MPs with Israeli-Hungarian double citizenship, not to Jewish people. At the same time, Gyöngyösi offered an apology. As Al Jazeera reported, the incident led to "international condemnation of Nazi-style policies and a protest outside the legislature in Budapest. Around ten thousand Hungarians in Budapest protested against Gyöngyösi's antisemitic remarks. All major Hungarian political parties took part in the protest. At the protest, Attila Mesterházy, the leader of the successor of the state party of the communist era, the Hungarian Socialist Party, described Jobbik as a "fascist possessions virus", while 5th district of Budapest mayor Antal Rogán, representing the governing Fidesz party, described Jobbik as "evil". Jewish organizations responded to Gyöngyösi's speech by describing it as a reintroduction of Nazism into the Hungarian parliament and by describing Jobbik as a Nazism party.

In 2014, Tibor Ágoston, the deputy chairman of Jobbik's Debrecen and Hajdú-Bihar County organization, referred to the Holocaust as the "holoscam". Tamás Horovitz, the chairman of the Debrecen Jewish Congregation, and the mayor of Debrecen, Lajos Kósa, condemned Ágoston's remarks. Later, Ágoston harshly criticized Gábor Vona for not supporting Előd Novák and for cutting ties with the so-called "radicals" in the party.

In 2015, deputy leader Előd Novák posted to his social media account on Facebook a picture of himself and his family next to a separate image of Rikardo Racz, the first newborn in Hungary of the year, who was born to a Romani people family. In a comment on the pictures, he stated that the population of Hungarians would become a minority and suggested that the Romani population was the biggest problem facing Hungary. Novák's remarks were both condemned and supported. Novák later responded to the issue by refusing to apologize and suggesting that the family should apologize to him. Előd Novák was forced by the party's parliamentary group to resign from his position as an MP in 2016. Now, he is a vocal critic of Jobbik's new policies.