An unlawful decision of the Hungarian Competition Authority allowed for the creation of Fidesz's media empire, stated the court.

The government is working hard to obscure the events and to confuse the public opinion following the banning of several editorial offices - including the staff of 24.hu, one of the most read online portals - from Orbán’s annual “Orbáninfo” last Thursday. While the fact alone that the Prime Minister is willing to expose himself -once a year - to journalists independent from the government is a rarity, it is decided entirely arbitrarily who may be given this opportunity and who will be denied entry.

According to the Court of Justice Advocate General’s opinion, the fact that under the Hungarian 2017 Lex NGO, civil society organisations receiving foreign donations are subject to restrictions violates the right to the protection of private life and the right to freedom of association, and infringes the principle of free movement of capital. This is not justified by the general interest objectives relied on by the government of Hungary. Based on the AG opinion published today, the Court of Justice of the European Union is likely to decide that the Lex NGO is in breach of the EU law.

This year is nearing its end: it’s time to find out how many hospital acquired infections occurred – in 2018. That’s right: it has taken this long to provide last year’s data. The most important question is: what does the new report tell us? Has the situation further deteriorated, or can we finally see improvement?

The new regulation, according to which, all children who reach 6 years of age before 31 August 2020 must start school in September, creates surreal situations. What about those 5-year-olds who are attending the 2nd (middle) year of preschool and will be 6 before enrolling in the 3rd and final year of pre-primary education?

Lajos runs his errands on his own, he works, and his family can count on him on a daily basis; still, the state wanted to put him under guardianship. It is derogatory and depressing that a guardianship process can be initiated based on one unsubstantiated hospital note. By initiating a guardianship procedure, social services can subject anyone to litigation for years, provided that one doctor thinks that this person is unable to make responsible decisions about their own life due to a psychiatric disorder. Fortunately, Lajos fought back.

It is the conviction of many that Fidesz owes its 2018 victory in the general elections (or at least the two-thirds majority) to the registering of false residential addresses. Although Kispalád (for example) has seen a 150% increase in its population in the last seven years and the press has uncovered several similar cases in the past few years, no one knows exactly how many false residential addresses have been registered with a fraudulent aim. We will never know the exact numbers, but a recent verdict of the Metropolitan Regional Court should provide some clarity. The competent State Secretariat of the Ministry of Interior is now obligated by a final judgement to release the requested data to the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) and to Political Capital (PC). Let’s see what this is all about!

Many people have received unsolicited phone calls from pollsters and parties, even though they banned the public telephone directories from publishing their telephone numbers. We'll take a look at some of the typical violations that have occurred and tell you what you can do if your information is misused in the campaign.

A mayoral candidate overseeing the polling on the spot; a “polling booth” made out of a cardboard box in Budapest; rural candidates chased down the street; burned ballot papers; and various creative forms of vote-buying—we have collected the most extreme cases of violation reported on our election hotline during the municipal elections.

While the police descended on András Pikó's 8th District campaign team because of a photo that showed nothing more than activists leaning over papers, the clearly legible photos made of the “Kubatov List” did not merit an investigation. On Election Day, opposition activists chased groups of people presumably involved in the organized transport of electors and even found a packet that looked like a bunch of ballot papers in a taxi, but the police had not acted. Why did they react to these situations differently?

Amnesty International Hungary, Hungarian Helsinki Committee, Mérték Media Monitor, Háttér Society, Hungarian Civil Liberties Union and Tansparency International Hungary elaborated a joint NGO reaction paper to rebut the Hungarian government’s response to the Reasoned Proposal in the Article 7 procedure against Hungary.

The action against the act stigmatizing Hungarian civil society organizations has entered a new phase: on 22 October the Court of Justice of the European Union will conduct a public hearing on the case.