Bálint Magyar, former Hungarian Minister of Education, sociologist, former dissident and former President of the Hungarian Liberal Party (SZDSZ), is currently in training at the Central European University (CEU), whose international curriculum, valid in particular in the United States, is no longer recognised after the Orbán government's refusal in this sense. Meeting in Florence on the fringes of the State of the Union where he was working on the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, he gave an update for EUROPE on the current climate. (Interview by Solenn Paulic)
Agence Europe (AE): How is the CEU doing in Budapest?
Bálint Magyar (BM): The situation is still pending with the government, which refuses to give its consent. To date, there has been no decrease in the number of applications to the CEU and the University has developed cooperation with Vienna, where the campus is larger, as well as with the University of Munich. But this situation has consequences: it creates uncertainty and raises logistical and financial questions. Which university can operate without visibility on the future? This situation allows Viktor Orbán not to directly abolish the CEU, but to hinder its functioning. We know why he started attacking the CEU: he does not like the idea of alternative resources being devoted to research that does not support his policy; the CEU was founded by George Soros; the CEU is also students from the former USSR who have returned to Russia and who are generally not fans of Putin and it is also a favour to the Russian President to hinder the CEU. But the problem is more general: the whole Hungarian academic and higher education community has been in difficulty for several years and the Law on Higher Education, which aims to make their functioning more dependent on government decisions, with a kind of blackmail on subsidies. Some institutions are struggling to maintain their autonomy, such as the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which has been under attack since 2017. But university autonomy has almost completely disappeared in Hungary.
AE: How is the campaign for the European elections going?
BM: There is a huge inequality between the Fidesz and the other parties, the Fidesz using government money, so that you cannot tell the difference between the two. The other parties have no money for election signs or advertisements; they are very disadvantaged in the media. Each party has 5 minutes to speak on public television, but they are almost never invited to participate in other programmes; the media have been reorganised and concentrated in particular in a 'Media foundation' close to the government. Today, about 78% of the media are under government control. And these opposition parties are also not in very good shape: they are unable to form a united alliance as is the case, for example, in Poland. They may lose a number of votes because there is no common list. At this stage, polls credit the Fidesz with a result between 11 and 14, out of the 21 elected officials the country sends, and the other parties between 7 and 10; sending 14 deputies would be a good result for the Fidesz (he currently has 11). These results may also affect the local elections to be held in the fall.
AE: In Florence, you compared Hungary to the other Visegrád countries and discussed the autocratic tendencies of some governments such as the Polish government. How can the EU counter these trends?
BM: Rather than with endless and fruitless discussions, countries that do not participate in the European Public Prosecutor's Office (such as Hungary) should no longer be funded; this would be a very simple and effective sanction. Because, at the moment, we have situations where European taxpayers' money is used by criminal governments. I spoke of a mafia state for Hungary and studied autocratic tendencies, comparing in particular the Polish and Hungarian cases. The characteristic of the Orbán government is to be motivated by power and wealth, the concentration of power and the accumulation of wealth for the same political family. In Poland, this is the motivation of power and ideology, because the objective of the PiS is to achieve a "Christian nationalist" value system. In Hungary, on the other hand, power does not follow an ideological objective. His approach to ideology is purely utilitarian. These two countries, on the other hand, have in common the use of the concept of nation rather than autonomous citizens, which they use to create their legitimacy and exclude critical citizens, described as representatives of foreign interests. They also share a particular form of Euroscepticism and continue a "struggle for national freedom against the Brussels dictatorship" while continuing to expect resources from the EU. And there is the fear and suspicion of refugees, migrants and foreigners, exceptionally high in both countries.