To misquote von Clausewitz, the European Union sees lawfare as the continuation of politics by other means. Brussels’s latest sally against the government of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, which it viscerally detests (and which seriously rattled Eurocrats last week with its calculated brinkmanship over the Ukrainian aid programme) is a nice example.
The new casus belli is a piece of domestic Hungarian legislation from last year, the Act on the Defence of National Sovereignty. (For a fairly rough English translation of the law, see here.) The measure is essentially aimed at making it harder for transnational NGOs and foreign-funded organisations like the Soros Foundation (called the ‘dollar left’ and the ‘Soros Empire’ in Hungary) to campaign on matters of domestic Hungarian social policy. It also aims to stem the flow of foreign money to Hungarian candidates and political parties.
Put briefly, the new law beefs up the criminal prohibitions on foreign subventions to Hungarian politicians, and sets up a governmental Office for the Defence of Sovereignty. This latter is tasked with identifying organisations that further the interests of foreign states or bodies, and foreign influences on the will of the voters or the results of elections, and making their activities public through an annual report. Its activities are not subject to control by the courts, and it can demand information from any organisation or person it wishes, although apparently the sanction for non-cooperation is nothing more than being publicly named and shamed as a refusenik.
Brussels has now issued a formal allegation that all this infringes EU law in numerous respects. It is said to violate the principle of democracy, the right to private life, the protection of personal data, freedom of expression, information and association, and the right to a fair trial. Budapest has two months to respond, after which the stately dance of Euro-litigation begins with formal proceedings in the European Court in Luxembourg.
We won’t know the legal result of this for some time, though the smart money is on the judges in Luxembourg – a body generally very supportive of EU centralisation – siding with Brussels. But, as usual, whether you like the new Hungarian measure or not (and, to be fair, there are many who don’t), there is much more to this than a dry legal procedure.
For one thing, this is a continuation of an existing EU campaign to gain as much leverage as possible over national democratic processes. Brussels makes no secret about its unhappiness with the idea of 27 self-contained national democracies and its preference for a pan-European politics with influence – and funds – flowing freely across intra-EU borders. In 2020 it gained a victory against Hungary on this front when the European Court found against an earlier Hungarian measure requiring campaigning organisations receiving money from elsewhere in the EU to register and reveal their sources of income. Orban’s new measure is meant to get round this by not requiring registration, merely transparency. Putting aside the ban on foreign funding of the actual political process, the worst that can happen to a ‘dollar left’ organisation under this law is naming and shaming. One might have thought that this was pretty impeccably open and democratic: Brussels’s attitude, however, is that even this modest attempt to ensure the Hungarian people know who is trying to pull the strings is an unacceptable obstacle to pan-Europeanism which has to be dismantled.
Secondly, underlying this episode is a continuing tension in Europe and elsewhere between two social outlooks. Hungary’s social conservatism, overtly Christian, pro-marriage and widely supported by an ethnically homogeneous people jealous of their culture, is unwelcome to liberals in much of western Europe and the US, who (probably rightly) see internationally-funded organisations and pressure-groups within Hungary as a good way of subverting it. In seeking to ensure that Hungary remains open to such influencers, Brussels is without doubt acting quietly in concert with these liberals.
Lined up with Brussels, for example, is the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, the preciously progressive body that oversees the European Convention on Human Rights, who as soon as the law was passed weighed in against ‘steps taken in Hungary to impose arbitrary restrictions to the indispensable work of human rights NGOs and defenders in the country.’ The Biden administration seems to be on side as well. The US embassy, never a friend to the Hungarian administration (the ambassador is an LGBT+ activist whose appointment was a carefully calculated snub to religiously-conservative Fidesz), added its criticism too.
In the end, this is going to be a political fight between a centralising and liberal Brussels, and a Hungary which is probably the most conservative EU member state and certainly the most jealous of its sovereignty over internal affairs. Who will ultimately win is anyone’s guess. But we should be careful about betting against Hungary. Its people are remarkably united in their mistrust of foreign interventions. And its politicians, far more culturally informed than most of ours, know well how to recite their nation’s history back to Árpád I, a rough contemporary of Alfred the Great. Charlemagne may have come earlier but his empire has gone. Árpád’s nation, despite many vicissitudes, is still there. Brussels might care to ponder that.
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