Position: Hungarian Prime Minister
Incumbent: Viktor Orban, born May 31, 1963
Term: Assumed office on May 29, 2010, for four years
Key facts:
-- Orban leads the strongest government in Hungary's post-communist history. His centre-right Fidesz party, in a tight alliance with the small Christian Democrats, controls a two-thirds majority in parliament. Its MPs are disciplined, and Orban and Fidesz can rush through legislation at will.
-- Orban is fiercely independent and has not shied away from conflict with markets. After taking office, Orban broke ties with the International Monetary Fund, which bailed Hungary out with an emergency loan in 2008, saying he would take direction from nobody except the European Union. Even so, it took Fidesz until September to accept the EU's 3 percent of GDP budget deficit limit for 2011.
-- Orban's administration has put forward a string of measures that confounded markets, including a steep windfall tax on the financial, energy, telecom and retail sectors, and an effective re-nationalisation of the country's mandatory private pension funds. The money thus raised will be used to fund income tax cuts, plug a hole in the state pension fund, and repay some of Hungary's large public debt.
-- Non-financial measures have been equally contentious, including curbing the jurisdiction of the top Constitutional Court, and passing a strict media law which critics have said could be used to silence dissent.
-- Orban takes over the rotating presidency of the European Union on Jan. 1, 2011.
-- The main priorities of the Hungarian presidency are an amendment to the Lisbon Treaty allowing the creation of a European Stability Mechanism; energy security, continuation of EU enlargement, tackling the Roma issue, and promoting a European Danube strategy.
-- Orban has spent his entire career in politics. He has led the Fidesz party for most of the past two decades, and was prime minister between 1998 and 2002. He returned to the helm of government after two elections lost to the Socialists. (Writing by Marton Dunai; Editing by Jon Hemming)