Colby Hopkins, an American social justice activist and graduate of New York University, is currently in Budapest and is witnessing firsthand an on-going protest in the Városliget (City Park) against the Orbán government’s decision to construct a new museum quarter, at the expense of trees and much needed public green space. Many analysts believe that the government is using the development […]
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 […]
One of Hungary’s most prominent pollsters and research firms, Medián (commissioned by Robert Bosch Kft.), published some insightful statistics today, on how transportation and the role of cars in the lives of ordinary citizens is changing in Hungary. Anyone who has been to Budapest (I just returned from a three week trip) can tell you that driving in the city […]
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, […]
Writing in Saturday’s printed edition of the Népszava daily, journalist and author Paul Lendvai suggested that Brexit “strengthened Viktor Orbán’s position, almost as much as the recent soccer victories” during the UEFA European Championship. While Mr. Orbán may benefit on the surface, and in the very short-term, I would argue that Brexit will pose a very serious challenge to his […]
