In Hungary, a new draft law threatens to sanction media outlets receiving foreign funding, including private donations and funding from the EU. Our partner 444 is one of the main targets. This is no longer a warning: it’s a direct attack on press freedom and concerns all of Europe. We have dreaded this moment for months. What the Hungarian government has done exceeds the worst-case scenario.
Budapest, 27th May
The “Easter purge,” as Orbán himself called it, had been promised. On the 15th March—Hungary’s national holiday commemorating the 1848 revolution, which notably included a demand for press freedom—Orbán announced a plan to eliminate the “shadow army.”
Ever since that speech, we knew something big this was coming.
Then, a few days ago the draft of a “Transparency law” was published, 2 minutes before midnight. Everyone was anticipating something bad, but this surpassed all predictions: it was harsher than any of our expectations. The law is now scheduled to be voted on in Parliament on the 10th June. Technically, it’s still a draft and could be amended. But we don’t expect any major changes, even under pressure.
This draft law could be called “shut up or shut down”. It gives the Sovereignty Protection Office the power to put certain independent organisations, like independent media or NGOs that are seen as “threats to Hungary’s sovereignty”, on a special list, for the Government to then sanction if needed. In many ways just like the foreign agent law in Russia.
We’ve seen this coming for years. The past 15 years of consecutive Orbàn-led governments has brought a very long and very cognizant process of silencing or repressing critical voices in Hungary.
The process of silencing dissent began in 2010, when Orbán’s government passed a harsh media law. Since then, many organisations have been taken over or forced to close, investors left, the advertising market became completely distorted, and most importantly independent media have been denied, to a large extent, access to public interest information, forced to file special requests just to get answers to basic questions. If this new law passes, it won’t be just another step—it will be a leap toward the autocratic regimes we have formerly only seen outside Europe.
One of the scariest elements is how far they’re willing to go to silence critical voices, including forcing leaders of organizations to declare personal wealth and potentially allowing authorities to conduct researches into devices and data storage. So even the private sphere is already very clearly targeted.
Despite this, we remain clear about why we do what we do. We will comply with the laws as far as we possibly can—but we will not give up on the journalistic activities that we consider to be the basis of our mission.
Our organizational goals up to the 10th June are very simple: do everything possible to stop this law from passing and put pressure on to amend, at the very least, its most radical and unacceptable dimensions.
We believe this draft also serves to provoke conflict with the EU, because if the EU swallows this as it is, then the rule of law within the European Union is directly undermined. So the EU must react in some manner.
A strong EU reaction however—political or even legal—might serve Orbán’s narrative: Brussels being the root of Hungary’s problems.
In the meantime, people are reacting. We’ve seen peaks in website traffic, direct communication, and voluntary donations. This gives us a stronger sense of our responsibility to protect what we have. Even in political circles that typically support the government, there seem to be cautiously sceptical or even somewhat critical voices.
The only real prevention measure is for citizens to recognize these kinds of threats early, and mobilise and inform each other. Political powers shift—that’s democracy. But the very idea of the media becoming the primary target of dominant political powers, being purposefully discredited and subjected to state financed disinformation campaigns to undermine the trust in them are all inputs for ultimately ending up with a truly antidemocratic situation without open societal debate– which is possibly unsalvageable.
Our mission remains unchanged: to provide free, fact-based information and critical independent journalism. No matter the severity of the measures, we are determined to continue.
This is not just a threat to independent journalism or civic spaces but to some of the very last bastions of freedom in our society. People’s right to be informed and the right of the media to inform freely and express and reflect opinions is at stake—and the price is getting ever higher.
