BARCELONA, Spain – Last week, representatives of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán vetoed more than $19 billion in new EU funds for Ukraine, but he backed out of the position this week, paving the way for the money to arrive. to cornered Kyiv.
The reversal was not due to a fundamental change of heart by Orbán, the most pro-Russian leader in the 27-member EU and an ally of prominent American conservatives like former President Donald Trump. Instead, the Hungarian strongman’s stance changed after he was threatened with the loss of nearly $14 billion in much-needed EU funds. The EU had promised the money on condition that he fulfilled promises to make his government more democratic and respectful of the rule of law.
With the Hungarian economy teetering, the country has shed its arrogance – at least for the time being.
“The Hungarian economy is in a very, very dismal situation right now,” Péter Krekó, executive director of Political Capital, a Hungarian policy research institute, told Yahoo News. “And your currency is plummeting.” He suspects that Orbán, in his fourth consecutive term as prime minister, is desperate.
In a round of carrot-and-stick negotiations, Brussels announced on Tuesday that it would release only part of the EU’s money to Hungary – about $6 billion – but demanded that Orbán’s government press ahead with a number of reforms, including reducing corruption and make the Budapest judiciary more independent.
Zsuzsanna Szelényi, a former member of the Hungarian Parliament and author of a new book on Orbán, “Tainted Democracy,” told Yahoo News that she no longer considers Hungary a democracy due to its lack of transparency and restrictions on the power of the prime minister. .
“This country is a mess,” Szelényi said.
And Hungary, which is poorer than many of its EU counterparts, is especially dependent on EU funds. By a 2020 measure, the country of 9.7 million people has received more funding per capita from Brussels than any other member state.
“Since Viktor Orbán came to power, Hungary has received 49 billion euros [just over $52 billion] in financial support,” said Daniel Freund, a member of the European Parliament representing Germany’s Green Party. “It’s to go to ordinary Hungarians, to renovate schools, to bring fast internet to the countryside. Instead, it is enriching the family and friends of Viktor Orbán, who basically turned Hungary into a mafia state.” Orbán’s associates, he said, now control entire industries, including most of Hungary’s construction, recycling and waste management.
What’s more, Freund said, “Orbán controls the prosecutors, he personally appointed the judges, and the entire justice system was taken over by Orbán. Corruption, as long as it is organized by him, is not being investigated, is not being prosecuted”.
Wojciech Przybylski, a political analyst at the Polish think tank Visegrad Insight, expressed similar concerns. “The EU’s anti-corruption agency OLAF is reporting that misappropriation of money in Hungary is four to five times higher than in any other EU country,” he told Yahoo News.
However, Orbán seems popular with his countrymen: shortly after his fourth consecutive victory in April, the results of the Pew Research poll showed a 57% approval rating among Hungarians.
Even his detractors describe Orbán as intelligent, persuasive and systematic in achieving his goals. “He is not an old-fashioned corrupt crook,” Przybylski said, adding that Orbán worked for years with US Republican strategist Arthur Finkelstein to help polish his messages and advance his agenda. “I would have to praise Orbán as one of the most skillful politicians of our time,” he added.
Szelényi, who knew Orbán personally, described him as “a charming, charismatic politician” who took cues from conservative American politicians. His anti-immigration stance and slogan – “Make Hungary Great Again” – directly echo Trump. He was also the first world leader to endorse Trump’s candidacy in 2016, and the two met in August of this year before Orbán flew to Texas to speak at CPAC, a conference for conservative activists in the US. fan, last year flew to Budapest to record his show there for a week.
Part of Orbán’s appeal to Hungarians, Przybylski said, is stoking nostalgic resentments, including territorial losses resulting from the Treaty of Trianon after World War I, when the Allies cut off two-thirds of the Kingdom of Hungary’s land. That nationalist sentiment was underscored when Orbán recently appeared at a soccer game wearing a scarf with a map of “Greater Hungary,” which included large parts of present-day Serbia, Croatia, Romania and Slovakia.
“Orbán disregards the values of the European Union and talks about the EU as a hostile body,” said Krekó. “Anti-EU language is much tougher in Hungary today than we’ve ever seen in the Brexit campaign.”
Orbán even threatened to leave the EU in “Huxit”, but most dismiss this as an idle threat. Most Hungarians want to stay in the EU, Szelényi said. And with Orbán’s reliance on EU funds, added Freund, “for Hungary, it’s basically suicide to leave the European Union.”
Like Trump and Carlson, Orbán has voiced support for Russian President Vladimir Putin. But his stance took on new urgency after Putin launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February. The Hungarian leader has frequently blocked or softened efforts to punish Russia, angering his peers in the EU and NATO, of which his country is also a member.
“We can see that Hungary has had an impact by making exceptions [the EU’s proposed] the Russian oil embargo and the Russian gas price cap,” said Krekó. “The head of the Russian Orthodox Church was not placed on the EU sanctions list because Hungary objected.” Orbán also prevented European arms transfers to Ukraine from passing through Hungarian territory, he added. This gun ban is significant because Hungary shares a border with Ukraine.
But as the war in Ukraine has unified much of Europe against Russia, it also appears to be encouraging the EU to freeze money to force reforms. Many are needed, analysts say.
According to Szelényi, Orbán’s party changed the constitution in 2011 and 11 times since then. “They basically can change the constitution whenever they want,” she said.
What’s more, much of Orbán’s administration operates in secret, Szelényi added. “There are many government decisions that are not public, that should be public in a democracy. They are hiding big transactions. Basically, we don’t know what this government is doing because it’s incredibly opaque.” Przybylski highlighted this concern, adding that “since 2014, the Orbán government has made all its agreements with Russia secret”.
Marius Dragomir, former director of the Budapest-based Center for Media, Data and Society, was shocked by what he saw happening to local media – something he called “media capture”. Dragomir noted that after Orbán’s party lost elections in 2002 and 2006, he blamed the defeats on liberal media bias.
When Orbán’s Fidesz party won in 2010, its leaders began appointing loyalists to serve on media regulatory boards and take over state media. Then the government began investing its large advertising budgets only in pro-Orbán media outlets. Businessmen favorable to the prime minister also bought private media outlets.
This level of control is problematic because it can become an unchecked source of misinformation. “After the end of February,” said Dragomir, “all the mainstream media in Hungary started promoting Russian propaganda. I think people can see why this is dangerous.”
Dragomir sees other countries such as the Czech Republic and Bulgaria launching their own imitations of Orbán’s media-grabbing ploys. But Freund doesn’t think the imitations will stop there. “The big fear I have is that this kind of behavior will spread and that other governments will say, ‘Oh, there are certain laws or decisions that we don’t like in the EU, so if Orbán can ignore them, why not us? do that too?’”
“If we fail to deal with the most corrupt and outrageous attacks on the rule of law that we have in the European Union, it could really encourage others to follow suit. And that’s why I find it so incredibly dangerous.”