Hungary’s ruling party has postponed a planned vote on draft legislation aimed at organisations that receive foreign funding, following weeks of protests and warnings that the law would “starve and strangle” civil society and independent media.
Viktor Orbán’s rightwing populist party, Fidesz, put forward legislation last month that would allow the government to monitor, penalise and potentially ban organisations that receive any sort of foreign funding, including donations or EU grants.
Any organisation could be targeted if it was deemed to “threaten the sovereignty of Hungary by using foreign funding to influence public life”.
The parliamentary vote had been expected to take place in mid-June. Despite critics likening the legislation to Russia’s “foreign agent” law, it was forecast to be passed by parliament as Fidesz holds a two-thirds majority.
But on Wednesday, Fidesz’ parliamentary party leader, Mâté Kocsis, told local media that the vote would be postponed until autumn as the government had received several suggestions regarding the law. “We are united in our intentions, but there is still debate about the means,” he added on social media.
Civil rights organisations celebrated the delay, with Amnesty International calling it a “huge joint success”.
“Of course, we can only rest easy once this unlawful bill has been scrapped for good,” the group said on social media. “Unfortunately, one thing is certain: the government will not give up its attempts to silence independent voices, as has been its goal since 2010.”
Previously, Zoltán Kovács, a spokesperson for the Hungarian government, had said the bill had been introduced amid worries that foreign-funded organisations, primarily from the US and Brussels, were shaping the country’s political discourse.
The legislation takes a broad view of what constitutes a threat, describing it as acts undermining Hungary’s constitutional identity or Christian culture or challenging the primacy of marriage, the family and biological sexes.
The proposal was swiftly slammed by opposition politicians, who said it would allow the government to potentially shut down all independent media and NGOs engaged in public affairs, while Transparency International described it as a “dark turning point” for Hungary. “It is designed to crush dissent, silence civil society, and dismantle the pillars of democracy,” the organisation noted.
The warning was echoed by the Hungarian Helsinki Committee. “If this bill passes, it will not simply marginalise Hungary’s independent voices – it will extinguish them,” co-chair Márta Pardavi said in a statement that described the draft law as “Operation Starve and Strangle”.
Scores of Hungarians took to the streets in protest while more than 90 editors-in-chief and publishers from across Europe, including from the Guardian, Libération in France and Gazeta Wyborcza in Poland, called on the EU to take action.
The bill pushed by Orbán – who is facing an unprecedented challenge from a former member of the Fidesz elite, Péter Magyar, ahead of elections next spring – has been described as one of his government’s boldest to date. “Its aim is to silence all critical voices and eliminate what remains of Hungarian democracy once and for all,” a joint statement, signed by more than 300 civil society and media organisations, recently noted.
Magyar was quick to respond to the delayed vote, saying on social media that it would allow the government to “squeeze even more” out of the proposed bill and “further divert attention from … the livelihood and housing crisis, Orbán’s galloping inflation and the destruction of education”.
The introduction of the draft law in Hungary’s parliament had marked an “escalation” in the government’s years of democratic backsliding, said Veronika Móra, the director of the Ökotárs-Hungarian Environmental Partnership Foundation. Many in the country’s steadily shrinking civic space had been left rattled by the proposed law and reeling from the uncertainty of what comes next.
“And we’ve already felt the chilling effects, especially smaller, weaker organisations who were really frightened by the draft law and the potential consequences,” she said. “So even if it’s not passed – which would be great – it’s already had an impact.”
