Hungary

“The Hungarian government’s interference with media freedom and pluralism, part of its systematic attack on the rule of law, obstructs the work of independent journalists in holding the authorities to account and prevents the public from accessing information” – HRW

Leading editors and journalists from independent press in Hungary warn that the law could be used to make life more difficult for those media critical of the government.

“The proposed law would effectively open the door to state-sponsored pressure on those media which receive foreign funding and produce journalism critical of the government” – MFRR partners

“This legislation, reminiscent of the stigmatising 2017 LexNGO and the 2018 Stop Soros laws, is yet another affront to Hungary’s constitutional, international, and EU commitments” – HCLU

In early September, a series of DDoS attacks took the International Press Institute’s (IPI) website offline. Although the website is back online, IPI continues to face cyberattacks.

Since April 2023, at least 40 media websites – predominantly ones that are critical of the government – have faced Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

“This decision by the EU’s executive body to take Hungary to court over the alleged breach in EU telecoms rules regarding Klubrádió’s frequency licence is a belated but important signal that the Commission is increasingly willing to use the tools available to it to defend independent media, freedom of expression and media pluralism where they are most threatened.”

“If the future government does not take concrete steps to dismantle this political system which has enabled the concentration of media ownership as well as the deliberate attacks on media independence, Hungary would risk becoming a black hole from which no reliable news and information emerges.”

Ahead of April’s general election, IPI’s new report finds that the Fidesz government has continued to systematically erode media pluralism, muzzle the independent press and manipulate the market to further entrench a pro-government narrative.

“In Hungary, Poland and Turkey, increasing control of ruling parties over state-controlled companies, advertising agencies, media regulators, competition watchdogs and even the courts, has allowed for a steady intensification and diversification of campaigns against critical press.”

“IPI calls on the Hungarian national security committee to hold an urgent session to assess how long this illegal monitoring has been carried out for, who is responsible for approving the surveillance and assessing how many journalists have been targeted.”

Almost a year after the ECJ declared the discriminatory NGO law illegal, the government has submitted a draft to parliament to repeal it. However, groups assisting asylum seekers are still criminalised in law and organisations that criticise the government continue to face smear campaigns.

“The EU has sat on the sidelines for too long. Repeated inaction to stop the undermining of media freedom and pluralism first in Hungary, and then in Poland, has allowed this model of media capture to grow and spread to other Member States. The cost of further inaction is simply too high.”

In June 2020, the ECJ ruled that Hungary’s restrictions on foreign-funded NGOs broke EU law. In light of Hungary’s failure to comply with the ruling, HCLU and allies offer three recommendations and call on the European Commission to act.