The ordinary courts remaining the last remnants of the constitutional order that enjoy a high level of legitimacy in all parts of Hungarian society. The GDP shrunk by 5.1% in 2020. The disproportionate power of the Senate where, because of rural-urban polarization, a solid Republican majority can dominate with a minority of American votes has in turn led to a decisive conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, often the final arbiter on the countrys most contentious policy decisions. According to OECD, the overall tax burden decreased from 39.5% of GDP in 2008 to 36.6% in 2018. Since 2018, the European Commission has failed to investigate the legality of exemption, despite repeated calls from Hungarian civil society. Although the Authorization Act was passed with votes from the Fidesz Party, the government waged a defamation campaign against the opposition, accusing it of obstructing the pandemic response. The debt-to-GDP ratio in fiscal year 2019 was 66.3%. The government offers participation in policy formulation to interest organizations primarily to economic chambers and employee organizations, but those structures are selective, nontransparent, and exclude a large segment of civil society. There is no realistic competition to the states monopoly on the use of force. In 2019, asylum-seekers detained in the Rszke Transit Zone were repeatedly subject to inhuman and degrading treatment and starved. The government sets strategic priorities and regularly subordinates them to the demands of office- and vote-seeking. The 2019 institutional reform further centralized the investigation and prosecution of corruption under the Central Chief Prosecution Office. The irregularities experienced during the 2019 municipal elections surpassed by far those in previous contests. Reporting by Direkt36, one of a handful of independent media outlets in Hungary, has uncovered a large number of favors done by Orbn for Putin ranging from a sweetheart nuclear energy deal to tolerating Russian spying activities in Hungary. Or does an outright confrontation of pro-Orban and anti-Orban forces lie ahead? Hungarys one-party constitution, the Fundamental Law, has been amended nine times since coming into force in 2012 by the same incumbent Fidesz Party which adopted it in 2011. The capture of the Constitutional Court and the election of former Prosecutor and Constitutional Court Judge Andrs Zs. It has decreased significantly from its 80.8% level in 2011, which demonstrates the governments commitment to macro-economic stability, but still remained above the 60% threshold of the Maastricht Criteria. If Orban is reelected, disappointment and frustration will encourage opposition sympathisers to stage similar protests. Even if he does win, it will be by a narrower margin than before; the heydays of governing with a supermajority will be long gone. Hungarys asylum policy is characterized by the systemic violation of international and European legal standards.

According to European Commission data, the share of renewables in energy consumption peaked in 2013 and has slightly decreased since, which makes compliance with Hungarys 2030 climate goals unlikely. However, as the government does not participate in it, the body only has a consultative role. It decreased to 0.75% in June 2020 and to 0.6% in July 2020. In 2020, under the guise of pandemic containment measures, parliament was further sidelined, and democratically elected municipal authorities curtailed. Considering the experiences of past elections, high-level of irregularities can be expected in 2022, with a definite impact on the outcome. Since 2017, the lex NGO and lex Stop Soros target and criminalize foreign-funded civil society organizations and those active in supporting asylum-seekers. Klubrdi ceased broadcasting in February 2021, continuing its operation online. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. Foreign trade is liberalized both with the EU and third countries. Jobbik, which belonged ideologically to the conservative tribe, is now part of the systemic opposition to the Orbn regime. A program for indefinite majoritarian rule seems underway: Hungarys prime minister may flout his nations commitment to E.U.

This fourth consecutive victory means he will remain the third-longest-serving current leader in Europe at nearly 16 years in power, behind only Belaruss Aleksandr Lukashenko (28 years as president) and Russias Vladimir Putin (23 years as president or prime minister). Nevertheless, the lack of structural problems in the economy and the generous external funding provided by the Next Generation EU coronavirus recovery package make a fast return of economic growth rather likely. As the 2020 edition of the Council of Europes annual media freedom report formulates, since 2010 the government has systematically dismantled media independence, freedom and pluralism, achieving a degree of media control unprecedented in a member state of the European Union. In the 2020 World Press Freedom Index, Hungary ranked 89th out of 180 countries, a decline of 66 places since 2010 when Fidesz came to power. According to Eurostat, Hungarys GDP per capita in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms was 73% of the EU27 average in 2019, the eighth lowest among member states. However, as Hungary has been undergoing genuine autocratization since 2010, no democratic or market economy transformations are taking place in the country that could be obstructed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, challenges posed by periodic online education and the decrease in employment may have an above-average impact on people already at risk for poverty and exclusion. This value is not only higher than in the aftermath of the 2008/2009 global economic crisis, but also negated the results of debt reduction efforts over the past decade. The figure is not only one of the lowest in Europe, but the 34% decrease demonstrates the chilling effect on civic activism of the governments anti-NGO and anti-civil society policies. Special sectoral taxes remain prevalent. Hungarian universities perform weakly by international comparison. The Belgrade-Budapest railway line being a key project of Chinas Belt and Road initiative, the partnership also holds significant financial interest. Another legitimate question is whether the opposition parties which contested two rounds of primaries to elect the previously unknown mayor of Hodmezovasarhely as its lead candidate can preserve their fragile unity and come up with a program that goes beyond the overarching desire to get rid of Orban, while convincing voters that they are capable of actually running the country. Hungarys absorption rate is one of the highest in the EU. In contrast, the economy contracted by 5-6% in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Hungarian Ministry of Finance. The Hungarian NGO law, which closely resembles the Russian and Israeli foreign agent laws, ordered the compulsory public registration of civil society organizations receiving more than HUF 7 million (19K) financial support from abroad. Institutional safeguards of civil rights have been significantly weakened during the reporting period.

Thus, the legitimacy of civil society participation at any stage of the policy cycle is seriously questioned, and often straight out rejected by the government. The two pillars of the incumbent governments long-term development strategy are rent-seeking and maintaining low labor costs in manufacturing. If Orbn remains in power beyond April, he will threaten the West by breaking the unity surrounding sanctions and using them as a bargaining chip in future European Council decisions, blackmailing his so-called allies with vetoes, writes Pter Krek, director of the Political Capital think tank in Budapest. In Hungary, the institutional framework is formally still there, but Orbans government gave up on democratic norms and used government power to capture the institutions, which are not fulfilling their roles as checks and balances.. In addition to gerrymandering, Orbns government has increasingly rigged the media environment and campaign system against his opponents meaning that fewer and fewer Hungarians ever hear what the opposition has to say. Many Hungarians authentically support Orbns views on these topics; relentlessly hammering these themes in pro-government media deflects from the corrupt and anti-democratic heart of his regime. The independence of the judiciary was gradually curtailed. Amid all the uncertainties, one thing can be taken as a given: Hungarians will bid farewell to the relative stability that has characterised domestic politics for the last 12 years, and will have to embrace another, more debate-centred political culture. Democracies depend on an institutional framework and on a cultural background: the acceptance of democratic norms, Szelenyi wrote. Orbn does have a real constituency. The ethnic composition of its population is relatively homogeneous. The understaffed, underfunded health care system was stretched to its limits by the coronavirus pandemic, resulting in the suspension of medical surgeries in non-life-threatening cases and in one of the lowest number of tests conducted and highest death rates in the European Union. Aside of being member of NATO and the European Union, the government of Viktor Orbn pursues short-term pragmatic benefits via close cooperation with systemic rivals of the above organizations, like Russia and China, weakening the integrity and resilience of both NATO and the EU. Hungarys transatlantic allies widely shared a concern that the IIB is a cover for Russian human intelligence operations in EU and NATO countries. Political corruption and informal power networks are key pillars of party-state capture. Such an amalgamation of political groups and ideas was only possible because support for and opposition to Orbns regime evolved to become the main political cleavage in Hungarian society. Hungarys institutional and political framework provides an overwhelming systemic advantage to Fidesz. Based on OECD data and methodology, in 2019, relative income poverty among children was 16.9%, which is significantly higher than Hungarys Central and Eastern European neighbors. Its unlikely anyone in attendance will condemn the anti-democratic political maneuverings that have come to make Orban seem impossible to defeat. Inequalities increased since the Orbn government took office in 2010, in line with a redistribution policy that generally favors the upper-middle class. The annual budget deficit was 2% of GDP in 2019, while in 2020 the Ministry of Finance expected a deficit between 7% and 9% of GDP. The new structure of the state secretariat for energy, climate, construction, infrastructure environment and sustainability can be seen as an institutional guarantee that climate policy considerations do not hamper the ruling elites important economic interests. In December 2020, the European Council yielded to extortion and postponed the implementation of the rule of law conditionality regulation. In response, the government significantly increased public employees basic salaries, but abolished the former promotion system and increased unpaid overtime. With an average age of 42.5 years (2018) and a fertility rate of 1.55 in (2020), Hungary may face significant demographic challenges in upcoming decades. According to OECD data, in 2018, environmental taxation represented 2.38% of GDP and 6.47% of total tax revenues, both above OECD leverage. Youre reading an excerpt from the Todays WorldView newsletter. Hungary held its last elections that were in full compliance with OSCE standards of democratic elections more than a decade ago, in 2010.

Furthermore, to avoid systemic abuse of the funds from the Next Generation EU coronavirus recovery package, the European Commission asked Hungary in January 2021 to systematically reform its public procurement legislation and practices, as these serve as vehicles for organized political corruption. In late March, the Polish defense minister backed out of a planned summit with Hungary, citing their disagreements on the Ukraine invasion.

The disruptive shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was fairly severe in Hungary. The drastic reduction of the number of public employees in the state administration in 2016 2017 led to an increased burden on the remaining public employees as no reduction in bureaucratic tasks took place parallel to the personnel cuts. Even though sustainability is enshrined in the Hungarian Fundamental Law, environmental protection is rarely the governments priority over the economic interests of the state or the business circles close to Fidesz. Vulnerable groups, such as pensioners, children, the unemployed and Roma are particularly exposed to poverty. Innovative ideas and constructive criticism are rare phenomena. In the period of 2014 2020, 22 billion in cohesion transfers were allocated to Hungary, which accounts for more than 3.8% of Hungarys gross national income. Lszl Kvr, the speaker of the National Assembly, has extended the disciplinary rules that may be imposed upon opposition members of parliament, curtailing freedoms members of the parliament formerly enjoyed. The national election commission (NVB) consists of mostly pro-government members elected in 2013 for nine-year terms. Will you support Voxs explanatory journalism? Furthermore, international partners may closely cooperate from day one with Hungarys new democratic government to support the prosecution of political corruption-related crimes committed under the Orbn regime and to foster a fresh start for democratic transition in Hungary. According to data from the Corruption Research Center in Budapest, between January and April 2020, 27% of the net contract value awarded in public tenders was won by companies close to Fidesz, with 68% of those contracts awarded in tenders with a single bidder, a significant increase from 2019 (21% and 51%, respectively). Several other features of the electoral, campaign and media regulations systematically favor Fidesz. Hence, its readiness to engage in policy learning is extremely limited. However, these figures do not systematically differ from those of 2018. A constitutional debt brake is also enshrined in the Hungarian Fundamental Law. Furthermore, Fidesz abused the Authorization Act to further cement its power and infringe upon LGBTQ+ rights, even though the act was repealed in June 2020. Over the long term, however, several factors may constrain governance. Ukrainian arms may be sold to terrorists in France. The ruling party can be replaced under current electoral rules, but elections since 2014 demonstrate an accelerating deviation from OSCE principles of democratic elections. In 2019, the debt-to-GDP ratio totaled up to 66.3% after years of moderate but constant decreases. The other groups delegate national advocates as observers in parliament. In case of a future opposition victory, these informal power circles may evolve into veto groups powerful enough to undermine democratic governance. The inequality adjustment of the Hungarian HDI (7.4%) is one of the highest in Central and Eastern Europe, demonstrating the high impact of poverty and inequality on human development. While previously a negative side-effect of democratic politics, since Viktor Orbn entered power in 2010, highly centralized political corruption became the main modus operandi of Hungarian politics. Hungary maintains special ties as a kin-state with ethnic Hungarians living abroad. The temperature in the United States is no doubt increasing, particularly on the right. While, according to polling data, the united opposition has a fair chance to beat the incumbent party at the 2022 general election, without constitutional power, it may face serious difficulties in overcoming the anti-democratic veto actors entrenched by the current regime. The BTI Transformation Index is a project of. Consensus-building is unrealistic under the given political conditions. The same could soon be said about the United States. According to the report, the share of EU funding affected by fraudulent irregularities is ten times above the EU average (3.93% vs. 0.36%). Since Prime Minister Orbn announced the project of an illiberal democracy in 2014, Hungary has in fact suffered from autocratization. The Fidesz campaign actually exceeded legal limits on billboard spending, per the report, but they got away with it by labeling campaign posters funded by the government itself as public information activities.. He may have constructed a powerful network of patronage and crony capitalism to reinforce his rule. The report also alleged that the share of EU funding affected by fraudulent irregularities is approximately ten times higher than the EU average (3.93% vs. 0.36%). The gerrymandered electoral map continues to favor the incumbent party. Political appointments even to low-level leadership positions in the public administration are common, often resulting in the appointment of young, inexperienced people or political nominees without appropriate expertise in a given field. Promoting national capital in key sectors of the economy, like the finance industry, is a strategic goal of the Hungarian government. Furthermore, the official narrative relativizes or denies the anti-Semitic nature of the Horthy regime, which is often used as a historical reference point with values shared by Orbns regime and its System of National Cooperation. The Supreme Court just let a Trump judge seize control of ICE, at least for now. According to the Hungarian Statistical Office (KSH), the percentage of people at risk of income poverty was 17.7% in 2019, following a constant decrease since 2012, with 12.2% suffering from relative income poverty. Orbn has long seen Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz as a potential ally in a European coalition of anti-migration parties, but Kurz distanced himself from Orbn after Fidesz became sidelined in the European Peoples Party. Since Hungary scores high in all these fields, Budapest may come under significant pressure from Washington. The government denies Hungarys responsibility in crimes against humanity that were committed in World War II after the countrys occupation by Nazi Germany and thus responsibility for the Hungarian victims of the Shoah and Porrajmos, the Jewish and Roma Holocausts, respectively. In spite of the oppressive political environment, an increasing number of independent media outlets and civil society organizations have accomplished successful crowdfunding campaigns that enable the continuation of their operations. Since 2010, the opposition has been unable to establish a single committee of inquiry, despite repeated attempts. Since then, independent institutions have been captured and the checks and balances on executive power eliminated, with the notable exception of the ordinary judiciary that has mostly preserved its independence. Since 2018, government advertising exceeds 10% of all advertising spending in the Hungarian market. Unpacking the spectacle at the heart of the movies mysteries. The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes. The MNBs current director, Gyrgy Matolcsy, is a former economic minister under Orbn. The independence of the Constitutional Court and the ombudsperson is widely questioned as well. The Office of the Public Prosecutor exercises broad discretion regarding whether to initiate investigations and its decisions cannot be contested. The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user. Although journalists were not persecuted based on this law, several people, including opposition activists, were arrested, and questioned by the police. The December 2020 amendment of the electoral code increased the required number of single-member candidates that parties need to field in order to run national-level lists from 27 to 71. School enrollment rates for boys and girls are 99.9% and 100% in primary, and 99.2% and 99.7% in lower-secondary schools, respectively. Moving further right towards a one-party authoritarian system, or returning to a fragile democracy Hungary faces quite a choice in 2022. Here, the government has to walk a very fine line. A new far-right European party family as envisioned by Orban encompassing not only Polands Law and Justice, Italys Lega, Marine Le Pens National Rally but also the extreme-right Spanish Vox, Austrian FP and German AfD could become the third biggest force in the European Parliament. The political discourse in Hungary is determined by the governing partys populist mobilization against constructed public enemies and by the opposition parties systemic opposition to the structures and policy preferences of the Orbn regime. The government stands up a series of villains Muslim migrants, the Jewish billionaire George Soros, LGBTQ activists and presents them as existential threats to Hungarys way of life. This situation was further exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. The logic of the populist dichotomy divides civil society into useful and hostile segments. In reality, these ties are already plenty deep. Politically sensitive, conflicting sectors requiring negotiations, such as health care, environmental protection or education, are managed opaquely and poorly. Furthermore, the court ruling in the segregated education case of Gyngyspata in early 2020 and political reactions to it clearly demonstrate that anti-Roma mobilization and attacks on the judiciary are part of the governments communication toolkit that can be employed opportunistically. Hungary is one of the largest recipients of EU funds on a per capita basis. During the second and third waves of the pandemic, the country had one of the highest death rates in the EU, compared to the number of infected persons. Line ministers and their subordinates rarely dare to make decisions independently because of the all-encompassing nature of power political goals, which results in the unpredictable and chaotic operation of the government. For the opposition, defeat in April would be a doomsday scenario, meaning the country is in desperate need of not just better government but a whole new opposition as well. Average life expectancy at birth is currently 76.9 years. The European Anti-Fraud Agency, OLAF, claimed in 2019 that Hungary is the only EU member state where national authorities detected fewer irregularities in the use of EU funds than OLAF did. In 2017, independent CSOs established an umbrella organization called Civilizci to coordinate forces in battling political intimidation, raise awareness for civic engagement and deepen the roots of CSOs in Hungarian society, achieving some limited success. Academic institutions and research initiatives perceived as critical of the regime or possessing the wrong ideology face mounting pressure. Poverty risk among pensioners rose to 19.1% from 4.4% in 2010. However, social participation in any stage of the policy cycle has been severely restricted since 2010. The COVID-19-induced Authorization Act in March 2020 suspended all local and national elections and referenda. Since 2013, Hungarys Fundamental Law defines a family exclusively as a union between a man and a woman. Hungarys electoral playing field is heavily tilted against the opposition. Apolitical and loyal CSOs, as well as the growing number of government-organized non-government organizations (GONGOs), belong to the former category, while independent CSOs and particularly the watchdogs operating in politically sensitive fields to the latter one.

While the government was preoccupied with further cementing its power and ideological narrative, Hungary had one of the highest mortality rates compared to the number of infected persons and the countrys health system remained completely unprepared for the second wave of the pandemic in the fall of 2020. According to Eurostat, the Gini coefficient increased from 24.1 to 28.6 between 2010 and 2014, and has since hovered around 28. In December 2020 January 2021, electoral support for a united opposition list was even with that for Fidesz. Orbns statements were accompanied by widespread attacks against judges in the pro-government media. The main platform of social dialogue, the national economic and social council (NGTT) includes representatives of employers, employees, churches, civil society, academia, and the arts.