Prime Minister Viktor Orbán became the first sitting leader of a European Union country to formally endorse Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump. Speaking at a gathering of right-wing politicians, thinkers and youth, in the heart of the Hungarian-majority region of Romania called Székelyföld (or Szeklerland), Mr. Orbán declared: “Trump would be better for Europe and for Hungary.” He then referred […]
Our news site has never, up until now, reached out to Jobbik politicians directly with questions and there is certainly a strain within the Hungarian opposition, which continues to argue that the far-right party must remain in quarantine. When the opposition cable news network ATV changed its policy a few years ago and invited Jobbik politicians in for interviewers for the first […]
Antal Rogán, Minister of the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office, gave an interview Sunday morning to state-run Kossuth Radio. Speaking about the impact of the terrorist attack in Nice, he warned Hungarians about travelling to western European countries with significant immigrant populations, as he believes that the integration of immigrants has failed and therefore the risk of terrorism is high. “Europe […]
Jobbik, the party that is a trying hard to shed its extremist, far-right image, will focus much more attention on the ruling Fidesz party’s unprecedented and systemic corruption spree. Tamás Pintér, the party’s local president in the industrial town of Dunaújváros, will enter parliament in the fall, and will take over the seat of Előd Novák, a founding member of […]
Lajos Simicska, one of the wealthiest and most influential businessmen in Hungary, has often boasted that he was the one to lift Viktor Orbán–once his close friend and former college roommate–to power. (HFP reported on last year’s stunning and very public falling out between the two men here.) According to a report in the Népszabadság daily, based on sources close to Mr. Simicska, he has now […]
Nándor Csepreghy, Deputy Minister in the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office, disagrees with his boss, János Lázár, who recently toyed with the hypothetical idea of a Hungarian referendum on European Union membership and said that in such a plebiscite, he would vote for Huxit. It is quite widely believed that Mr. Lázár’s suggestion of Hungary’s departure from the EU was a […]
It was another bad week for the increasingly erratic Máté Kocsis, the Fidesz party mayor of Budapest’s 8th District, after the politician, who is also the ruling party’s president in Budapest, went on yet another homophobic tirade using social media. As we reported, Mayor Kocsis recently lost a court case that he launched against liberal politician Klára Ungár, who he […]
Andrew Hammond, previously a special adviser to the British government and formerly a Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress in Washington DC, has published widely on foreign policy matters. He is currently affiliated with the London School of Economics. With permission, HFP is republishing Mr. Hammond’s most recent piece, which appeared this morning in […]
Hungary has already left the European Union, at least in terms of the Orbán government’s overt rejection of the ties that have bound the country to the Transatlantic community since 1990, including the system of checks and balances, judicial independence (however flawed this may have been, at times), parliamentary democracy and media freedom. But a growing number of analysts believe that […]
In other news from the European Union, not related to Brexit…Many thanks to my friend, Balázs Szücs, a city councillor in Budapest’s 7th District, for taking me to an eye-opening example of civil disobedience in Budapest’s City Park (Városliget) on Tuesday. Pro-democracy opposition activists and civil liberties demonstrators occupied the Hungarian Technical and Transportation Museum, chaining themselves to the windows, […]
