News

Orbán's Media Empire Unlawfully Given Green Light

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

Make the registering procedure for Orbán’s press conferences public!

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.

Advocate General of the CJEU: Hungarian law that restricts NGO financing from abroad is incompatible with EU law

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.

Last year was another year when more people died due to hospital infections than in car accidents

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?

2nd year preschoolers might have to skip 3rd year and end up in primary school instead

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?

All he wanted was a doctor's visit, it turned into years of litigation

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.

We will finally know how many people have been affected by the fraudulent registration of false addresses

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!

This is what you can do if you have been harassed by unsolicited calls in the campaign

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.

These were the most extreme violations during the municipal elections

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.

Did the police become a tool in the election campaign?

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?

Stating the Obvious – Rebutting the Hungarian Government’s response to the Reasoned Proposal in the Article 7 procedure against Hungary

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.

Public hearing is next step in the fight against the stigmatization of Hungarian civil society actors

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.