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A Russian-inspired sovereigntist law proposed by Viktor Orban's party targets the press, civil society and the opposition. In parallel, FIDESZ promotes anti-EU messages in the election campaign.
Orban's party, election campaign with anti-European messages and sovereigntist law in parliament
For several weeks, Budapest has been littered with large anti-European and anti-Semitic posters. The posters, which are part of the Fidesz campaign for next year’s European Parliament elections , depict the head of the European Commission, Ursula von Der Leyen, and the son of the philanthropist George Soros, and the message is only one: "Let's not dance to their music. "
As nothing happens by chance, especially in an illiberal country like Viktor Orban's Hungary, the posters appeared on the streets of the Hungarian capital on the exact day that the ruling party, FIDESZ, presented in parliament the sovereignty protection bill . This is seen by critics as one of many attempts by the Orbán government to silence the opposition and civil society. In 2017, for example, the Hungarian deputies adopted a law by which NGOs that received more than 22 thousand euros per year in foreign funding, would be registered as organizations that receive foreign funding. But that law triggered an international scandal. The European Court of Justice considered the law discriminatory and forced the Hungarian parliament to repeal it in 2021. Attempts continued last year with another law, this time targeting all civil society organizations with an annual budget of more than 55 thousand euros. The government asked the National Audit Office to carry out regular checks, while exempting sports or religious organizations, which receive by far the most public funding.
Orban's FIDESZ enjoys a comfortable majority in the Budapest parliament, which in theory allows him to make legislative changes or pass laws at will. However, many of Orban's initiatives to consolidate the illiberal regime have been blocked, or at least obstructed, by the European institutions because, being an EU member state, Hungary has assumed a set of rules and values and cannot do anything it wants within the community block. And when Budapest broke the rules and ignored European recommendations, especially regarding the rule of law, Brussels blocked funds destined for Hungary, a source of frustration for Viktor Orban who now has to manage an economy in crisis, which is increasingly needing an infusion of European money.
“Brussels' refusal to turn a blind eye to Budapest's anti-democratic slippages also explains why the debates on the Sovereignty Protection Law – which has been adopted in the meantime - have been doubled by the anti-European election campaign.”
It should be noted that the kind of discourse and legislative actions that put Hungary in conflict with Brussels are both reminiscent of those of Russia and sometimes seem to be confused with them.
A Russian-inspired sovereignist law, through which FIDESZ targets the independent press, civil society and the opposition
The legislative package proposed by FIDESZ has 3 essential points. The first concerns the amendment of the Constitution in order to establish the Office for the Protection of Sovereignty. The second concerns the amendment of the Criminal Code so that anyone who uses external funds in election campaigns can be sentenced to 3 years in prison. Finally, the third point refers to the fact that the funding law applies to all organizations, whether they are parties, NGOs or newspapers.
The Sovereignty Protection Law, modeled after the similar law in force in Russia, will be enforced through the Sovereignty Protection Office which will be established on February 1 next year. We're talking about an office that will be able to investigate "processes that suggest foreign interference." This foreign interference is vaguely defined in the text introduced in the unicameral parliament in Budapest. The agency will have unlimited powers when it comes to "disinformation as a means of influencing democratic debate", for example, but it also be able to out a wide range of tasks such as developing a "methodology for assessing threats to sovereignty" and proposing measures to protect Hungary's sovereignty.
Basically, the Agency that is to be established next year will have time to work before the elections. Through the reports it will draw up, it will identify the "sellouts", and then parliament will then decide what to do with them. These reports could be the equivalent of the "Register of Foreign Agents" in the Russian law on the control of persons under foreign influence.
The fact that the Law on the Protection of Sovereignty in Hungary does not clearly define who can be the subject of an investigation and leaves room for interpretation, makes NGOs and journalists feel directly targeted; in fact, in Russia too, the independent press and civil society are, along with the political opposition, the regime's favorite targets. And in Hungary the opposition is being kept an eye on, as one of the leaders of FIDESZ, Mate Kocsis, said, stating that it is a matter of "national sovereignty" that "the Hungarian left is financed from European funds, just like printed or online newspapers and NGOs, while they didn't give a penny to the teachers."
Under the Russian law, organizations that carry out political activity and receive foreign funding must register as "foreign agents," which has had the effect of killing any opposition to Vladimir Putin's rule.
The Hungarian bill goes even further than cutting ties with foreign financiers and seeks to ban the financing of political parties or candidates even by Hungarian companies or associations; the law also prohibits anonymous funding to parties. It is, in fact, a direct blow to the opposition, which is already facing serious financial problems.
Viktor Orban, Putin’s “long arm” in the EU
The arguments invoked by FIDESZ in the adoption of the Sovereignty Protection Law includes the "foreign interference in the electoral process". Journalists from Free Europe Hungary have shown how, in recent years, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his associates have intervened several times in the election campaigns of other states.
Investigations by journalists revealed that before the elections in Poland and Slovakia, the Orban government had promoted anti-migration videos in these countries. Moreover, Orban's advisers have provided advice to Kacinsky's party in Poland.
And the list goes on with large sums of money given to parties in power in Serbia, Bosnia and Slovenia. The funding methods are unclear, and the money arrived in all cases before the election campaigns.
One could say that Orban is financing his own fan club in the Balkans, a group of political allies with an economic purpose... Just saying.
I was writing in Veridica about Putin‘s outposts in Europe , in the Balkans. And I'm making this reference because here's how this law of the Russians regarding the control of persons under foreign influence in Russia will soon be found, in one form or another, in the Serbian entity of Bosnia Herzegovina, Republika Srpska, where the local parliament has the debates on this topic started as early as October. Miodrag Dodic, Putin's ally from Banja Luka wants a law to restrict the activity of NGOs and label them as foreign agents. But also Robert Fico, the Slovak populist politician whose party recently won the elections, wants all NGOs operating in the country and financed from abroad to be labeled as foreign agents.
Moscow's obsession with "foreign agents" is no accident. The independent press, civil society and the opposition directly threaten the power of Vladimir Putin, each in its own way: the media presents reality as it is, beyond the messages intended to maintain the cosmetic image of the regime, civil society promotes principles, values and fundamental rights incompatible with an authoritarian regime, and the opposition provides an alternative government. In order to do their work, however, journalists and activists need funds, almost impossible to obtain in a society where economic levers are controlled by power, and that is why the regime wants to cut off their sources of funding that they cannot control. By exporting the "foreign agents" thesis, the Kremlin also achieves a foreign policy objective, namely the undermining of Western values, within it (EU and NATO members) or on its periphery, in regions that, in the future, could become part of the western world.
The "foreign agents" story is not the only one where Budapest's message is very similar to Moscow's. Many of the great false narratives promoted by Russia over the past decade have also found their way into the Orban regime's discourse, from those about immigrants and Soros conspiracies to those about the European Union. We could also add to all this the obstacles set by Budapest with regard to the EU support for Ukraine or NATO enlargement, which made Hungary a real pariah in the two organizations.
It is obvious, perhaps more obvious than ever, that Viktor Orban, the "loud" and "unruly" from the back of the EU classroom is actually the long arm of the bully outside the school, that is, Putin.
But Orban's problem is exactly this: that the bully is outside the school and there he will stay. Hungary's prosperity and security ultimately depend on the EU and NATO. All Putin can offer is a model of power for life, incompatible with the European value system. In the most radical scenario, the total implementation of a Putinist model should also be accompanied by an exit from the EU, a Hunexit. However, betting on such a scenario is extremely risky - even for a politician like Orban, who has managed to remain popular for so many years - in a country that has the experience of the communist past and knows all too well what it means to be outside the club of liberal democracies.
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