Orban promises Soros crackdown
Victorious premier targets billionaire’s NGOs, civil activists.
In its first act after dominating Hungary’s parliamentary elections, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s party vowed to crack down on civil society activists, a move likely to exacerbate ties with his European Union peers.
After clinching a new two-thirds parliamentary majority, the ruling Fidesz party will advance legislation dubbed “Stop Soros,” a spokesman said Monday. Named after Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros, whom Orban has accused of trying to flood Europe with refugees, the bill is aimed at limiting, and potentially preventing, foreign funding of non-governmental organizations and penalizing those seen as supporting illegal immigration.
With the fragmented opposition in disarray, the “Stop Soros” law targets one of the last remaining sources of scrutiny into Orban’s government after eight years in which he has stacked independent institutions with loyalists, tightened his grip over media and allowed well-connected oligarchs to take over much of the economy. It also drives home Orban’s unbridled anti-immigrant campaign message, which has made him a role model for anti-establishment parties challenging the EU’s democratic values from Poland to France.
“Budapest’s ongoing confrontation with the EU will deepen over the next four years,” Eurasia analyst Nas Masraff said in a report.
The EU has sued Hungary over its perceived crackdown on civil society as Orban follows a trend among other countries that have targeted Soros-funded organizations. Russia banned them in 2015, saying they threatened the country’s security and constitution. Uzbekistan shut down the group’s local office in 2004. n Israel, lawmakers required foreign-funded NGOs to disclose the source of donations from abroad. Soros, 87, is also a target of criticism among right-wing groups in the U.S.
Fidesz shattered even its own expectations in its election victory, driven by a campaign that observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe described as “intimidating and xenophobic.” Opposition leaders decried Orban’s authoritarian tilt during the campaign in which Orban, 54, unleashed no-holdsbarred rhetoric about Muslims overrunning Christian Europe.
“We want to call out what’s ailing this continent,” Orban said late Sunday. “We don’t want to go against Europe and the EU, we want Europe and the EU to be strong and successful. But before that we need to be honest about what’s hurting us.”