One of Hungary’s national political weekly magazines, Figyelő, was bought by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s former adviser and government historian Mária Schmidt on Monday. While Ms. Schmidt promises to keep publishing the weekly, it is all but certain that the publication’s critical, independent voice will be gone. Figyelő will almost certainly follow the fate of the online publication Origo, or […]
The Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) is taking a leaf from France’s political playbook and is suggesting a system of opposition primaries ahead of Hungary’s 2018 parliamentary elections, in order to ensure that the liberals and the left-centre field a single candidate in each of the 106 ridings and also nominate a joint candidate for prime minister. The recent primaries among […]
Ásotthalom (population: 4,200) is a small town in southeastern Hungary, located a mere 3 km from the border with Serbia. Since 2013, the town has been led by Jobbik Mayor László Toroczkai, who is also the far-right party’s vice president. In 2015, the town made news for producing a bizarre, Hollywood-esque video awkwardly entitled “Message to Illegal Immigrants from Hungary” […]
American President-elect Donald Trump reportedly told Prime Minister Viktor Orbán that he is a “big fan of Hungary,” after which he promised over the telephone to invite the controversial Hungarian leader to the White House following his inauguration. It was mainly Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Péter Szijjártó who gave us a peek into what apparently transpired in the telephone […]
“Is heterosexuality difficult for you?”–asked conservative journalist András Stumpf of Gábor Vona, the leader of the far-right Jobbik party, in a video interview appearing on the party’s online TV channel, N1TV. Mr. Vona, who has been accused by media associated with the governing Fidesz party of engaging in homosexual orgies, answered with an awkward “no.” What Mr. Stumpf was getting […]
Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party had, by any standards, a terrible last month or so, yet new polling figures suggest that the popularity of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government did not suffer at all. It was revealed that Ghaith Pharaon, a Saudi businessman wanted by the FBI and Interpol for wire fraud, racketeering and allegedly funding terrorists, conducted business with a company tied […]
The Orbán government surprised the business world on Thursday, including the National Alliance of Employees and Employers, when it declared without any prior consultation that the country’s capital gains tax would be slashed from 19% to just 9% in 2017. Hungary’s dramatically reduced corporate tax rate of 9% makes it even more appealing than the already low corporate taxes paid […]
One of the relatively refreshing aspects of Hungarian politics until recently was that, broadly speaking, the personal lives of politicians were not paraded before the general public, and the public did not seem especially interested in this either. Over the last few years, however, media tied to Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party has rejected this unwritten rule, even to the point of […]
Lajos Kósa, Leader of the ruling Fidesz caucus in Parliament, called Jobbik leader Gábor Vona a “traitor,” after the far-right party blocked the Orbán government from amending Hungary’s Fundamental Law to prohibit the settlement of any foreign nationals in Hungary, without the prior approval of the national legislature. Fidesz is just two seats shy of a two-thirds super-majority in parliament, […]
Complete dysfunction continues in the Hungarian left-centre opposition and the president of the Hungarian Socialist Party (Magyar Szocialista Párt–MSZP) appeared to exacerbate the situation with a defeatist, bewildering and unnecessary statement. Gyula Molnár was speaking to the conservative HírTV news network within the context of the shambolic negotiations between left-wing, democratic parties aimed at launching primary elections as a first […]
