Fidesz

The last days of the Hungarian EP election campaign were characterized by an ever-intensifying anti-EU campaign on government-controlled and fringe disinformation portals. The Hungarian government seeks a strong mandate to represent its interest in the European Union

Swedish think-tank Timbro presented the subsequent edition of the Authoritarian Populism Index. The aim of the index is chiefly to determine to what extent populist parties can pose a real threat to liberal democracy in the European Union and five other countries on the continent.

A study by McKinsey & Company showed that 49% of the working hours in Hungary can be automated with the already existing technologies. This does not necessarily mean that these jobs will be lost forever, but they are going to be transformed.

The conflict of interest of individual parties in Hungary proved to be the opposition’s great weakness, the 2018 election results illustrate this perfectly: The national electoral system was shaped by the 2010 Fidesz government to favor large parties, including winner compensation and different types of gerrymandering.

713 articles shared on Facebook sites belonging to government-controlled media outlets and pro-Kremlin outlets indicate that the governing party’s EP campaign messages mainly attack the EU elite and the bloc’s institutional system through the dissemination of manipulative information concerning migration.

Centralization, decentralization in Hungary. How to best approach the subject? How best to describe a country, which at the moment has no other long-term goal other than the consolidation and retention of power for the governing Fidesz party?

On September 12, 2018, the European Parliament voted to initiate sanctions under Article 7 against Hungary. While the decision is definitely not a win for Viktor Orbán on a European level, it did boost his position at home.

Viktor Orbán’s right-wing populist Fidesz party won a third consecutive term in office with a two-thirds majority in the Hungarian parliamentary election of April 2018. Orbán is known for building an “illiberal state”, which he officially announced in the summer of 2014.

The proposed legislation requires the applicant seeking to obtain a permit to also be screened, so as to determine whether it receives foreign funding for its activities. The National Tax and Customs Administration of Hungary would carry out this screening.

The number of Fidesz voters has only fluctuated, but not changed significantly since the last elections in 2014. Apart from the numbers, it is important to mention that most of the opinion polls show that their supporters are continuously getting more homogenous.