Vaguely worded investigations, without any procedural rules, are being used by Hungary’s new Sovereignty Protection Office (SPO) against journalists and civil society. And it is already clear that probes by the organization, created by controversial legislation last year, are being deployed arbitrarily to target anyone the office considers a “threat to national sovereignty.”

“We want to nettle left-wing journalists, fake civilians, and dollar politicians,” Máté Kocsis, the governing Fidesz Party’s parliamentary group leader, said when explaining the legislation’s purpose.

It contains extraordinary, sweeping powers so extensive that the Hungarian Helsinki Committee called it a “regime defense law” and said it allowed the SPO to “arbitrarily consider any activity related to public affairs as serving foreign interests.”

The SPO launched “comprehensive investigations” against three civil society groups in June, naming as its first targets Transparency International Hungary, the investigative portal Átlátszó, and Göd-ÉRT Egyesület, a small NGO fighting environmental damage caused by a battery factory in Göd, a city 25km north of Budapest.

Transparency International, an NGO set up to expose and measure corruption in governments and corporations around the world, is accused of using foreign funding to “influence the will of the electorate,” the office said. The group has ranked Hungary as the most corrupt country in the European Union (EU) for two years running.

The new law is designed to deal with the perceived effect of Western soft power on sovereignty, rather than the more concrete forms of influence used by China or Russia. The Kremlin has many more diplomats and spies stationed in Hungary than in Poland and the Czech Republic combined, while Chinese police officers have been allowed to work in Hungary.

However, Tamás Lánczi, the Orbán loyalist appointed to head the new office, has openly declared that probing Russian influence is not a priority. Lavishly staffed with 110 people and very well-paid (Lánczi’s income is higher than Orbán’s), the office has been quick to flex its muscles.

A report published by the office in August labeled those who questioned government propaganda as “pro-war,” indicating its intention is to discredit and undermine independent media, organizations, and experts. 

Judit Varga, who was minister of justice when the legislation passed, said its goal was to target “servants of foreign interests,” including international NGOs and mainstream “progressive” media, which he said were trying to undermine Hungarian society.

What that appears to mean in practice is — at the very least — a campaign of harassment that creates additional administrative burdens, forcing the SPO’s targets to dedicate working hours to compliance with its requests.

“The smear campaigns target the big [civil society groups], but exhaust the small ones,” said Veronika Móra, director of the Ökotárs Foundation, which was subjected to an anti-NGO police raid 10 years ago.

Answers to 62 questions sent to Transparency International Hungary by the SPO were freely available online, the organization said, and the office did not have any lawful right to answer other questions it had asked.

Pro-government outlets have already developed a vocabulary for those who oppose Orbán’s government, including “dollarleftwing” (dollárbaloldal), “dollarmaid” (dollárcseléd), “dollarmedia” (dollármédia),and “dollarexpert” (dollárszakértő).

But the wording of the law is vague, and it remains unclear what counts as intrusive “foreign funding.” The meaning of “representing foreign interests,” and even how “disinformation” and “lobbying” are defined are also opaque.

The Sovereignty Protection Office has now created a support arm called the Sovereignty Protection Research Institute, headed by former communist-era counterintelligence agent, József  Horváth.

Although it has no legal authority to impose sanctions or fines, the office can initiate infringement or criminal proceedings through other authorities. There is currently no legal remedy to challenge its decisions.

The Sovereignty Protection Act has been sharply criticized by the European Parliament, the United States, the Venice Commission, and a plethora of Hungarian independent media outlets and civil society organizations, but Orbán’s government remains unrepentant about its implementation.

The European Commission took Hungary to court at the beginning of October, after Budapest failed to provide satisfactory answers to its concerns.  

It said the law breached internal market rules, as well as “fundamental rights enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights: the right to respect for private and family life, the freedom of expression and information, the freedom of association, the right to legal professional privilege, as well as the presumption of innocence, which implies the right not to incriminate oneself.”

But a final judgment is not expected for 18 months to two years. That’s a long time for under-fire civil society groups and media organizations to wait.

Dorka Takácsy is a researcher, focusing on disinformation and propaganda in Central-Eastern Europe and Russia. She is a visiting fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and a research fellow at the Centre for Euro-Atlantic Integration and Democracy. She is also pursuing a PhD at the Corvinus University of Budapest, researching Russian domestic disinformation about the West.

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.

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