According to Transparency International, Hungary was the most corrupt country in the European Union in 2023.[279] Between 2010 and 2020, Hungary dropped 69 places in the Press Freedom Index,[280][281] lost 11 places in the Democracy Index,[282][283] and deteriorated 16 places in the Corruption Perceptions Index.[284][285] In 2019 Freedom House downgraded the country from "free" to "partly free".[286] The V-Dem Democracy indices rank Hungary in 2021 as 96th in its "electoral democracy index" that measures "whether elections were free and fair, as well as the prevalence of a free and independent media", sitting between Benin and Malaysia.[287] Additionally, Freedom House's Nations in Transit 2020 report reclassified Hungary from a democracy to a transitional or hybrid regime.[288] Furthermore, in 2022, the European Parliament stated that "Hungary can no longer be considered a full democracy" and that the country has become an "electoral autocracy".[289]

The late professor of economics at Harvard University, János Kornai, described the evolution of the Hungarian state during Orbán's second premiership as having taken a "u-turn" away from the aim of becoming a market economy based on the rule of law and private ownership and instead beginning the "systematic destruction of the fundamental institutions of democracy". In her 2015 article on Orbán's illiberal democracy, Abby Innes, associate professor of political economy at the London School of Economics simply states that "Hungary can no longer be ranked a democratic country". Former minister of education, Bálint Magyar, has stated that elections in Hungary under Orbán are undemocratic and "free but not fair", due to gerrymandering, large-scale control over the media, and suspect funding for political campaigns.[292]