Dear Prime Minister,
By the time these words are published, you will have received Charles Michel, the President of the European Council, in Budapest. Even though he came as a representative of the same European Union that you criticise so harshly in your public statements, I do hope that your discussions were constructive, because there is a great deal at stake.
I am taking the liberty of writing to you firstly because hitherto, none of my articles has been specifically devoted to the Hungary that you embody and secondly, because I am now starting to see you somewhat isolated within the EU (arguably more than you are aware). Your faithful ally (on all matters except Ukraine), the Polish Conservative government, lost its majority in its recent elections. Poland has a population of nearly 37 million, while Slovakia has just 5.4 million: politically, the new Slovakian Prime Minister, your notoriously pro-Russian friend Robert Fico, is not going to do much to offset this loss. Of course, the far-right candidate won the Dutch elections by a considerable margin (much to the delight of Russian TV and, indeed, your own), but you shouldn’t be counting your chickens just yet: Geert Wilders will struggle to become head of government. The other members of the European Council are, as you have observed, playing the game of loyalty to the Union, including on foreign policy matters, even though they are of the same political stripe.
I have much respect and even sympathy for the man you used to be. You have of course not forgotten the evening meeting of 30 March 1988 arranged by a group of law students, including yourself, at the Bibo halls of residence at your university in Budapest, which decided to create the Alliance of Young Democrats, the Fidesz party.
You were a deeply committed figure of the movement, arrested by the police in June. On year later, a speech calling for free elections to be held and for the departure of Soviet troops made you famous. Migration to the West began via the Austro-Hungarian border, which was then open.
The few days after the Berlin Wall fell, the European Communities agreed upon an enormous assistance programme named PHARE (Poland and Hungary: Assistance for Restructuring Their Economies). Over the period 1990-1999, this programme had an envelope of 10 billion ecus. I have no doubt that you have forgotten about this major act of solidarity. Hungary was also one of the biggest beneficiaries of the programme TEMPUS in support of universities.
Elected to parliament for the first time in 1990, you won the 1998 elections to become Europe’s youngest Prime Minister: your economic policy is a great success, you support culture, reform the administration, join NATO. Following the 2002 elections, you had to step down from power for eight years. During that time, your country became a member of the European Union, following a referendum in which 83% of people voted in favour of joining. Senior officials from the new member states were appointed to the European Commission: the Hungarians were among the brightest stars in this new constellation, as I recall.
The European elections of 2009 provided the context for your party’s major comeback. One year later, you won the general elections with a two-thirds majority in Parliament, to mass exhilaration.
Are you still the same person as that young democrat back in 1988? I do not believe you are. The previous government and the financial crisis of 2008 took the country to the brink of bankruptcy. Bailout loans came in from the IMF, the World Bank and the European Union. You rejected the final tranche of borrowing in the name of national independence, brought in emergency taxation, cut public spending and paid off your debts. More importantly, you had barely been in power for five minutes before you made sure that Fidesz landed the three most senior offices of State (residences of the Public and of the National Assembly and the post of Prime Minister) and pushed through a law on media control.
In 2011, on the strength of your two-thirds majority, you managed to have a new constitution approved, restricting the right to strike, removing the principle of equal payment for equal work between men and women and referring to the country’s Christian roots. Then, you push through an election law drastically reducing the number of MPs and constituencies, so that towns and cities became grouped in with villages, where you tend to garner your greatest support.
Outside the country, feelings began to run high. A mass demonstration of support your regime was held in January 2012; placards bearing the words ‘European Union = Soviet Union’ were seen for the first time. A further modification of the fundamental law in 2013 curtailed the powers of the Constitutional Court and made it possible to throw the homeless out of public places and fine them. You won a landslide victory in the 2014 elections.
As Fidesz was a member of the European People’s Party, you didn’t have too much to worry about, as you brought them a lot of seats in the European Parliament. During the 2014-2019 legislative period, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker (whereas your preference would have been for David Cameron), greeted you with the words “hello, dictator!”
Cue the migration crisis of 2015, which has made you even more of a household name. You built a barrier, four meters tall and festooned with barbed wire, along first the Serbian and then the Croatian border. You increased the law enforcement powers of the army and the police to deal with migrants, criticised the open-doors policy of the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and rejected the ‘Juncker plan’ to share out migrants between member states (which, thanks to you and your allies, would fail). By the end of the year, your popularity rating in Hungary had risen from 32% to 48%. (To be continued)
Renaud Denuit