The Orbán regime’s infamous Counter Terrorism Centre (Terrorelhárítási Központ, TEK) has reportedly fallen out of favour with President János Áder. The president, who is a Fidesz politician previously charged with developing the country’s new, controversial electoral system, recently decided to engage the Operational Police (Készenléti Rendőrség) for his personal security needs, even though this is a role that would normally […]
The usually splintered Hungarian left-centre opposition is now rallying around the possibility of holding a vote of non-confidence in parliament, after it surfaced that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán ordered government ministries and departments to withdraw funds from the recently collapsed Quaestor brokerage firm, days before it went bankrupt. Mr. Orbán claimed that it was after the Buda Cash scandal that he […]
This week’s issue of Heti Válasz, a right-wing print publication that is apparently going to be spared the purge that is currently unfolding in the world of pro-Fidesz newspapers, television stations and news sites, confirmed that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is looking to build a broad alternative media base to that currently offered by mogul and Fidesz oligarch Lajos Simicska, […]
Recently, I had a chance to chat with Johannes Bloos the Deputy Consul General of the German Consulate in San Francisco, California. Mr. Bloos is a Saxon; his parents were part of this German speaking community in Brasov, Romania, before they immigrated to Germany. We talked about another Romanian-Saxon, Romania’s new president – Mr. Klaus Iohannis. His recent election was […]
The 25-year-old Visegrad Group, also called the Visegrad Four, is supposed to be an alliance of four Central European states – Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland andSlovakia – for the purposes of furthering European integration and advancing political, military, and economic cooperation. As it turns out the Visegrad Four is dead. In the last couple of months it has become clear that the Visegrad Four members fundamentally disagree on how to approach […]
A Budapest demonstration in support of autonomy for Romania’s Hungarian-majority Székelyföld (Szeklerland) counties of Kovászna, Hargita and parts of Maros county has caused a political storm, when organizers called Romania “the Islamic State of Europe.” Bogdan Aurescu, Romania’s foreign affairs ministere, telephone his Hungarian counterpart, Péter Szijjártó, to officially protest the accusation made by Árpád György Mózes, the president of […]
For the past years, Canada has been the target of an unusually high volume of senior level Fidesz political visitations, all travelling on taxpayers’ money, to work over the pro-Fidesz Hungarian diaspora. (The Hungarian governmental visits to Canada outnumber the number of such visits by Canadian governmental officials to Hungary, on a scale of roughly 100 to 1.) Virtually every […]
Hungary’s main Jewish community weekly magazine, Szombat, published a scathing critique of the country’s Jewish community leaders who, the publication charges, seem to be more interested in demonstrating their loyalty to the Orbán government and in being subservient, than in coordinating their message with each other and showing any signs of community solidarity before heading into meetings with the regime. […]
Hungarian newsmakers didn’t like UN Ambassador Samantha Power’s criticism of the Hungarian Government’s attempt to rewrite World War II history – so they rewrote her speech. Why not? Hungarian news sources often ignore important stories, but in this case they went one step further; they turned the table and rewrote it. They added lines she never said, a rant about […]
An international panel of experts at Concordia University drew public attention to one of the greatest credibility challenges faced by the European Union since its inception: the government of an EU member state – Hungary – has been openly defying the “Rule of Law”, and the core values the Union is formally committed to uphold. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán`s […]
