Hungarian Politics

[Tamas]

There are so many examples over the years (I think I shared a few here) of the police being in cahoots with the various private "security" firms and their thugs, this new one is a very minor one but still simbolises things very nicely.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1348257149317692

This is a small protest in front of one of the big (obviously oligarch-owned) casinos, protesters are chanting "let the rich pay!". It was organised by a small leftist organisation, whose leader is actually an opposition MP.

Anyways, you can see a bald gentleman -allegedly head of security- trying to force his way in despite the MP telling him he can get around them on the side. There is a tussle, then the security guy pulls the MP out of the crowd (around the 50 second mark), they face off for a second, and then a couple of police officers who had been standing ildly take the MP off him, while he is free to go back to the crowd, although after he removed the leader he just walks around the crowd and into the building.

The MP told the press that the police charged him with abusing the right to protest, and he has conceded his immunity as MP. He is not aware of any charges against the security guy charging a group of protesters standing there on a pre-approved protest.

[Tamas]

Price cap on petrol (instituted months before the war) is really starting to bite, hundreds of petrol stations around the country are closed and scenes of the recent Great British Fuel Panic are becoming commonplace in Hungary as people queue endlessly for the price-capped (95) petrol. I think non-capped premium petrol is still available but this is Eastern Europe, a penny saved is a great victory worth endless time and energy spent.

There is also growing lack of other price-capped products most notably sugar. I think the only thing saving the country from Venezuelaisation is its EU membership.

[Tamas]

EU members openly linked a vote on a joint loan to Ukraine with approving a big bunch of grants (reconstruction grants, I think) to Hungary. Everyone voted in favour of the Ukraine loan except Hungary who vetoed it. They'd rather give up on massive amounts of money rather than make it easy for the EU to fund Ukraine's efforts. Fucking traitors.

[Josquius]

EU members openly linked a vote on a joint loan to Ukraine with approving a big bunch of grants (reconstruction grants, I think) to Hungary. Everyone voted in favour of the Ukraine loan except Hungary who vetoed it. They'd rather give up on massive amounts of money rather than make it easy for the EU to fund Ukraine's efforts. Fucking traitors.

Smart move from Europe no? Playing orban at his own game.

[Tamas]

EU members openly linked a vote on a joint loan to Ukraine with approving a big bunch of grants (reconstruction grants, I think) to Hungary. Everyone voted in favour of the Ukraine loan except Hungary who vetoed it. They'd rather give up on massive amounts of money rather than make it easy for the EU to fund Ukraine's efforts. Fucking traitors.

Smart move from Europe no? Playing orban at his own game.

Definitely, Europe clearly needs to strangle this regime. But its shocking that with the Hungarian economy in a terrible shape, they'd rather lose all that money rather than skip on sabotaging anti-Russia efforts. It shows the extent to which Orban is Putin's puppet.

[Sheilbh]

EU members openly linked a vote on a joint loan to Ukraine with approving a big bunch of grants (reconstruction grants, I think) to Hungary. Everyone voted in favour of the Ukraine loan except Hungary who vetoed it. They'd rather give up on massive amounts of money rather than make it easy for the EU to fund Ukraine's efforts. Fucking traitors.

That's shifted, probably sensibly (it was also blocking the EU implementing the global deal on minimum taxation). The proposed Ukraine aid required unanimity so Hungary was the one linking it.

The council have now asked the Commission to prepare an alternative legal/financial "modality" for aid to Ukraine that doesn't require unanimity, but that will take time.

There's also been ping-pong over the suspension of EU funds to Hungary, basically because it looks increasingly like there aren't the votes to endorse the Commission's assessment on rule of law that would freeze funds. There's enough CEE countries plus Italy willing to vote against that it's not clear it would get through QMV. So EcoFin have also asked the Commission to prepare another assessment and to lower the amount of suspended cohesion funds.

On the upside it's likely that Ukrainian aid (and the tax deal) will get unlocked, but it also looks like the Commission will try to block less funding from Hungary and take a more benign view of Orban's "rule of law" reforms - which from what I've read are a bit Potemkin. I think member states/the council either still don't really get what they're dealing with in Hungary or have decided it's too hard and don't care enough

[Tamas]

They are not a bit Potemkin they are entirely Potemkin. It is a ridiculous notion to ask an autocracy to weaken itself. Any real return of independent oversight on corruption suspicions and charges would destroy the very fabric of Orban's regime. He will never, ever, introduce meaningful reforms which would even weaken -let alone destroy- his supremacy.

I can't believe EU politicians cannot see this.

[Sheilbh]

They are not a bit Potemkin they are entirely Potemkin. It is a ridiculous notion to ask an autocracy to weaken itself. Any real return of independent oversight on corruption suspicions and charges would destroy the very fabric of Orban's regime. He will never, ever, introduce meaningful reforms which would even weaken -let alone destroy- his supremacy.

I can't believe EU politicians cannot see this.

I think some don't want the Commission doing reports on them and their internal practices for conditionality - I think that's the Italy plus CEE block.

Sadly I think as long as Hungary is able to keep tying decisions on this to important issues that other member states care about but require unanimity - Ukraine aid, global tax deals etc - then other states will not let the agenda they care about fail if that's necessary to block funds to Hungary.

At some point I hope the logjam breaks in one way or other but I think those are the dynamics. I don't think it's that they're not aware. I also think it's a massive block on the EU ever wanting to re-open the treaties while Orban's around. I think there's already a massive reluctance following the French and Dutch votes on the constitution of doing any treaty work that would require a referendum, I think added to that, now, is a desire to not give Orban another veto point that he can leverage.

[Tamas]

Price cap on petrol (instituted months before the war) is really starting to bite, hundreds of petrol stations around the country are closed and scenes of the recent Great British Fuel Panic are becoming commonplace in Hungary as people queue endlessly for the price-capped (95) petrol. I think non-capped premium petrol is still available but this is Eastern Europe, a penny saved is a great victory worth endless time and energy spent.

There is also growing lack of other price-capped products most notably sugar. I think the only thing saving the country from Venezuelaisation is its EU membership.

And now very suddenly, in a 22:30 press conference by Orban's spokeperson and the president of the Hungarian oil company, they have announced that fuel supply cannot be maintained without imports therefore the fuel price cap is over as of 23:00 today. 

They are of course blaming the fresh sanctions on Russia and the "fuel crisis" it is creating across Europe.

[Tamas]

(Deutsche) Telekom's Christmas ad which aired in countries around Hungary but NOT in Hungary because it features an overworked teacher, and Telekom did not want to do "political commentary" since a good (but not huge) number of teachers have been protesting and striking for better conditions:
https://fb.watch/hqG82dU74k/

[Tamas]

The latest scandal that is bound to die off without any negative consequence to Orban in a matter of weeks after at most a protest or two by a few hundred middle class Budapestians is that Hungarian universities have been kicked out of the Erasmus program.

Apparently there have been many warnings by the EU about this, which apparently was approached by the government the same way the British government approached the NI Protocol: "surely they won't have the balls to actually hold us to this".

The issue is that a year or two ago Orban's people reorganised how universities are managed. Each of them have been "outsourced" into "foundations" which are actually much more like feudal fiefdoms granted to government ministers and other people who are not important or trustworthy enough to be made proper rich but still need to be rewarded with something sizeable. These leading politicians have been put in charge of the "foundation" board of directors responsible for spending university budgets, and as they do everywhere else, I am sure they started syphoning away EU grants to their henchmen's benefits. The EU's warnings have been ignored and now that the ban is in effect members of government feign surprise and outrage over "Brussels" "taking it out" on "children".

[The Larch]

It's been a while since the last Hungarian's government nefarious act, I've had to go back several pages for this thread. 

Hungary links Nato vote and EU money in quid pro quo

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán's MPs are going to Finland and Sweden on a mission to claw back EU money in return for Nato "favours".

That was the impression created by Orbán's top diplomat in a Facebook post this week.

"How can a country [Sweden] expect a favour [Nato ratification] from us when its politicians continually and repeatedly spread lies about Hungary?," Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjártó said after meeting his Swedish counterpart, Tobias Billström, in Stockholm on Monday (27 February).

"How can they [Finland and Sweden] expect speedy and fair decisions when, during the recent period, all we were hearing is there's no democracy in Hungary, the rule of law is not guaranteed in Hungary [...]," Szijjártó went on.

The minister's words amounted to "obvious blackmail" of the Nordic states and wider EU to unfreeze billions being held back on grounds of Orbán's abuse of rule of law in Hungary, for pundits such as Péter Krekó from the Political Capital think-tank in Budapest.

And Szijjártó's statement came as MPs from Orbán's ruling Fidesz party prepared to travel to Nordic capitals, lending a "transactional" agenda to their trip, Krekó said.

Fidesz has so far named only foreign-affairs committee chairman Zsolt Németh and parliament deputy-speaker Csaba Hende as among those going.

Nemeth is known for being more pro-Nato and Russia-critical than Orbán, rather than a loyalist insider.

Hende is a former defence minister who renegotiated a major Hungarian fighter-jet deal with Sweden.

It remains to be seen what they can bring back from their Nordic tour.

But in any case, they'll have to go quickly to report in time for the Hungarian parliament's Nato ratification vote — due no later than 21 March.

They also have no mandate on paper and while Szijjártó said they might meet Nordic government MPs, the Finnish and Swedish foreign ministries declined to tell EUobserver who the Hungarians might speak to.

The audacity of Orbán's Nato-EU gambit aside, the Fidesz mission was "quite illogical" in protocol terms, Krekó added.

It was "strange", said Ágnes Vadai, the shadow defence minister from the opposition Democratic Coalition party.

"There's no precedent in Hungary for the government to send a one-party parliamentary delegation of this type, so we are entering uncharted waters," she said.

Orbán's irregular behaviour made Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan look classy by comparison, she indicated.

Erdoğan also made unpalatable demands of Finland and Sweden in return for Nato ratification, Vadai said — but at least Turkey wrote them down in a trilateral memorandum, which created ministerial and technical-level talks to resolve issues.

"To make yourself the skunk at the lawn-party in both the EU and Nato at the same time is a weird kind of strategy," Nick Witney from the European Council on Foreign Relations, a London-based think-tank, said on Orbán's game.

The Hungarian parliament will hold a plenary debate on Nato on Wednesday, giving ruling coalition MPs an opportunity to clarify what's going on with the Nato process.

The Turkish-Finnish-Swedish talks will next take place on 9 March — the same day Orbán's MPs might first fly north, according to reports.

All 28 other Nato members have ratified Finnish and Swedish accession.

Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg also met Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin on Tuesday to show support for enlargement.

Neither had been briefed by Hungary on the reasons for its ratification delays, they told press.

But amid the swirling uncertainties, Vadai, Krekó, and other Orbán-watchers were sure that if Turkey, Finland, and Sweden strike a deal, then the Hungarian leader wouldn't have the brass neck to stand up against Nato on his own.

"It's great political theatre and good to leave it to the parliamentarians to hold things up while the [Hungarian] government position is still to ratify," said Jamie Shea, a former senior Nato official who teaches war studies at Exter University in the UK.

"But Hungary doesn't want to be the last and if Turkey starts to move I am sure Budapest will speed things up," Shea said.

[Tamas]

[Valmy]

One thing I don't get is why Orban would persist in a pro-Russian policy even when it has become pretty evident this war is not going to have a positive outcome for Russia. It seems like this would be a perfect time to cynically switch to a pro-western position and lap up all the goodies that would be tossed his way.  He has 100% control of the Hungarian media, he can do whatever he wants and spin it however he wants and all his supporters would accept it.

I guess he is just ideologically committed to this path.

Or he just wants to honor Hungary's 200 year old tradition of always being on the losing side of every international conflict.

I mean Russia might win this war but it will so dearly purchased that Russia will be a shadow of its pre-2022 self.

[Josquius]

One thing I don't get is why Orban would persist in a pro-Russian policy even when it has become pretty evident this war is not going to have a positive outcome for Russia. It seems like this would be a perfect time to cynically switch to a pro-western position and lap up all the goodies that would be tossed his way.  He has 100% control of the Hungarian media, he can do whatever he wants and spin it however he wants and all his supporters would accept it.

I guess he is just ideologically committed to this path.

Or he just wants to honor Hungary's 200 year old tradition of always being on the losing side of every international conflict.

I mean Russia might win this war but it will so dearly purchased that Russia will be a shadow of its pre-2022 self.

Russia probably have something on him personally.
This isn't about whats best for Hungary. Its about his own power and wealth.