“The bugs have overwintered,” said earlier this year, referring to journalists, political opponents and his critics. “We will dismantle the financial machine that has used corrupt dollars to buy politicians, judges, journalists, pseudo-NGOs and political activists. We will eliminate the entire shadow army.”
For Hungary’s populist prime minister, that time has now come. This week, Orban’s Fidesz party presented a bill that, according to The Associated Press news agency, “would allow the government to monitor, restrict, penalize and potentially ban organizations it deems a threat to national sovereignty.”
Reporting the news, Hungary’s largest independent news portal Telex, which is usually rather cautious in its choice of words, wrote that Hungary had left Europe. Its report was accompanied by a graphic of a black boot sole emblazoned with the Fidesz logo, as well as that of the Russian domestic intelligence service, the FSB.
The draft law on “transparency of public life,” as it’s known, was presented late Tuesday to the Hungarian parliament. Despite its rather innocuous title, if adopted it would create conditions akin to those in Russia regarding freedom of expression. For example, it would allow for the blacklisting of organizations, including media outlets, if they were deemed to “threaten the sovereignty of Hungary by using foreign funding to influence public life.”
What does Orban see as threats to national sovereignty?
According to the bill, threats to national sovereignty comprise the violation of the values and provisions of the Hungarian constitution, as well as the negative portrayal of these or the support of any attempt to undermine them. The constitutional values are described as including the unity and cohesion of all Hungarians, Hungary’s culture, marriage as being understood exclusively as a union between a man and a woman, or the pursuit of peace and cooperation with other peoples and countries.
The bill describes organizations to be all legal entities, registered or not. Activities that “influence public life” can include those that “try to influence any decision-making process or the will of voters.”
If the law is adopted, the Hungarian Sovereignty Protection Office, created in early 2024, will be given the power to classify all organizations as receiving “foreign support,” regardless of the amount and without a lower limit, if they receive any donations or gifts from abroad. That means a book would fall into this category, as would EU funding.
At the request of the body, the government would be able to list all organizations concerned in a special register. This would have such far-reaching consequences as not being able to qualify for the 1% income tax rule that stipulates that private individuals can donate 1% of their annual income tax to nonprofits.
If the law is passed, in future donors will have to include in writing that their contribution does not include any “foreign donations.” Organizations listed in the register will not be able to receive foreign funds without state approval. If they do receive money, they will be penalized with heavy fines and might even be banned.
The draft law does not allow for any appeals to object to being listed in the register.
In summary: If the law is adopted, Orban will be able to use it to criminalize and ban anyone or anything that criticizes him and his regime, from websites to political parties.
New law is targets ‘Ukrainian propaganda’
Orban’s government has already passed several laws aimed at discrediting critics in Hungary, such as the 2018 “Stop Soros” legislation, which criminalizes any individual or group that offers to help an illegal immigrant claim asylum. But this bill goes beyond that, a fact that the government hasn’t been hiding.
“The government has made it clear that this is not just about oversight,” wrote government spokesperson Zoltan Kovacs. “It’s about Hungary’s right to self-determination in the face of coordinated international pressure.”
Kovacs said that foreign-funded NGOs and media outlets had previously spread propaganda regarding and gender-related issues, but were now spreading pro-war and pro-Ukrainian propaganda. “The transparency law is the best tool against Ukrainian propaganda,” he insisted.
Bill ‘follows the Russian playbook’
Independent media outlets, civil organizations and opposition parties have been united in their scathing criticism of the draft law.
“The authorities want to control everything, they do not tolerate any place of free activity,” wrote the Telex portal. “Anything that is free, that is not under their influence, they close down, take away, making it impossible.”
The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, one of Hungary’s most important civil rights organizations, said in a statement: “This is not about protecting sovereignty. The government is trembling at the loss of power.”
The leader of Hungary’s largest opposition Tisza Party, Peter Magyar, said the bill was “another step on the Putin path.” He added that Orban was adopting things from his teacher [Russian President] Vladimir Putin.
“The bill … follows the Russian playbook,” Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony wrote on Facebook, adding that Orban was “trying in vain to turn our homeland into Russia, Budapest is not Moscow and never will be.”
If the law does come into force, the work of independent media outlets and NGOs will become extremely difficult, as many of them rely on the 1% tax rule for their activities. They could also be banned for the slightest infringement.
But it’s the Tisza Party, which is currently well ahead of Fidesz in the polls, that could really bear the brunt of the law, ahead of next spring’s parliamentary elections.
Orban has long claimed that the and have colluded with the Tisza Party to bring about a change of power in Hungary. This week, he went a step further and posted a video to Facebook in which he said that a Hungarian opposition party had played an active role in an operation carried out by the Ukrainian secret services. He accused Magyar and his party of launching “an attack against the Hungarian Armed Forces.” There is no evidence for this claim.
The “transparency” law will be debated over the coming week, and it’s not yet known when a vote will take place. What is certain is that the will most certainly declare the law illegal if adopted, but that could take years. By then, Orban might have achieved his goal of maintaining power at all costs.
This article was originally written in German.
The post Hungary’s Orban plans ‘transparency law’ to muzzle critics appeared first on Deutsche Welle.
