EU authoritarianism on the rise in Hungary

Hungary’s new government is doing everything Orbán was accused of — and getting rewarded by Brussels for it

I’ve written for UnHerd about how Hungary’s new government is doing everything Orbán was accused of — and getting rewarded by Brussels for it.

The new Hungarian PM Péter Magyar calls it “Operation Purgatory”: a sweeping constitutional and administrative offensive designed to destroy the Orbán system — and ensure it can never return to power.

The 16th Amendment imposes a retroactive lifetime term limit of eight years on the prime minister, barring Orbán — who has served for 20 years — from ever holding office again. No wonder critics have dubbed it the “Lex Orbán”. Virtually no parliamentary democracy imposes term limits of this kind. The 17th Amendment also sets a 12-year limit for MPs: conveniently, no sitting Tisza MP is affected — only the opposition, wiping out Fidesz’s entire senior cadre.

Then there’s the president. Rather than pursue impeachment — the only removal mechanism the constitution provides — Magyar simply inserted a line into an amendment declaring that the incumbent president’s term “terminates today”. Removal by legislative fiat. Even Amnesty International Hungary called it a constitutional coup. Add to this a purge of the Constitutional Court via a new retirement age, a special body tasked with investigating one party only — the old ruling party Fidesz — the shutdown of public media news output, the closure of Fidesz-aligned institutions and a judicial raid that took the party’s website offline.

These measures are clearly aimed at destroying the opposition outright, at making sure Fidesz can never return and thereby locking in Hungary’s EU-dictated agenda forever: dismantling Orbán’s heterodox economic model, phasing out Russian energy whatever the cost and full alignment on Ukraine.

Beyond the policy questions here, there is simply no way this brazen attack on the opposition can be defended on democratic grounds — and indeed Orbán himself, for all the EU establishment’s claims about the allegedly autocratic nature of his government, never dared to legislate his opponents out of existence. Yet the EU establishment, which spent fifteen years branding Orbán a proto-dictator, has responded by unblocking €10 billion in frozen funds. We saw the same film in Tusk’s Poland.

The lesson is clear: “democracy” and the “rule of law” function above all as pretexts for disciplining governments that resist the EU’s expanding authority. Indeed, when it comes to supporting its own emissaries, there is apparently no red line the EU will not cross — up to and including greenlighting the outright annulment of entire elections when they go the wrong way, as we saw in Romania in 2024.

As for Hungary, the strategy seems clear: the EU is bent on punishing the rebellious colony — by making sure it can’t rebel ever again.

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Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

Twitter: @battleforeurope

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