Updated: Hungary to Outlaw NGO's that Receive Foreign Funds
- 20 Feb 2025 5:44 AM
- Hungary Around the Clock
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán vowed to make it illegal for NGOs to receive money from the US as he ramped up his rhetoric against such groups in his Friday morning interview with Kossuth Rádió, asserting that their aim is to overthrow his government.
Orbán accused media outlets of being part of such a plot, saying “media, media platforms, online communication, NGOs, all of this increased the power of the left, and they all received this money with the aim of overthrowing the government.”
Financial contributions coming from the US must be made fully transparent and those who accept it must be penalised. “It is not possible to accept money from abroad in order to influence Hungarian politics, and those who participated in this must face legal consequences in the future.”
Further escalating his rhetoric, he declared “now is the moment when these international networks must be dealt with, they must be swept away, their existence must be made legally impossible.”
In one of the rare occasions on which he mentioned the leading opposition politician by name, Orbán said the international media consciously vilifies him but builds up opposition politicians.
Citing Politico as an example, which he said the Brussels-based website “continuously insults Hungary,” while boosting the profile of Péter Márki-Zay or now Péter Magyar.”
He went on to say that Soros organisations and the EU support these as well as such goals as “gender madness”, and claimed that these circles are financing the ongoing anti-government protests in Serbia and Slovakia.
EU affairs minister: Formerly US-funded NGOs 'aimed to destabilise political system'
In Hungary's experience, NGOs formerly financed by the US were aiming to undermine trust in public institutions and to destabilise the political regime, Janos Boka, the EU affairs minister, said in Brussels.
Boka told Hungarian journalists that their funding now from EU resources had also lacked transparency.
Support contracts concluded by the European Commission had not reached the level of transparency and publicity required by transparency regulations applying to member states, Boka said.
Boka vowed to request that instances be made public when the EC replaced the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as a financier.
*********************************
You're very welcome to comment, discuss and enjoy more stories via our Facebook page:
Facebook.com/XpatLoopNews + via XpatLoop’s groups: Budapest Expats / Expats Hungary
You can subscribe to our newsletter here: XpatLoop.com/Newsletters
Do you want your business to reach tens of thousands of potential high-value expat customers? Then just contact us here.
XpatLoop Media Partner
LATEST NEWS IN current affairs