Eurasia Press & News
The Hungarian prime minster has been influential in pressing the case that civil society groups use EU cash to lobby MEPs on green and other left-wing issues – claims that the groups call a smear campaign to oust liberal voices from policymaking.
At home, Orban and his ruling Fidesz party have, over the past decade and a half, drafted numerous bits of legislation designed to curb the activities of civil society and the independent media. The latest was a draft bill entitled “Transparency of Public Life”, which targeted organisations that his government claims threaten Hungary’s national security.
“We will dismantle the financial machine that has used corrupt dollars to buy politicians, judges, journalists, pseudo-NGOs and political activists,” Orban promised in May when unveiling the draft legislation, which would leave any NGO, media outlet or political movement receiving funds from outside Hungary open to investigation and prosecution.
Orban – whose capture of the bulk of Hungarian media is well documented – said his government will use the legislation to “eliminate” a “shadow army” paid by foreign interests to infect the public discourse in Hungary.
Critics have warned that the law is intended to muzzle all criticism of the regime, especially in the run-up to the April 2026 election. The government’s media office in Budapest did not respond to a BIRN request for comment.
Critics also note that, while Orban’s Fidesz party remains busy battling foreign forces that it claims seek to control Hungary, replace its people with immigrants, and impose gender ideology, it has ironically built up its own influence network across Europe, which is designed to promulgate the prime minister’s populist agenda.
This network encompasses media outlets, think tanks, and civil society organisations across Central and Eastern Europe, and increasingly further west, that push illiberal narratives in a bid to plant them in the public consciousness and raise support for like-minded political forces, say critics.
“The Orban regime’s influence-building,” analysts at Budapest-based think tank Political Capital state, “has aimed to establish cooperation with populist radical ‘sovereigntist’ forces by supporting them, convincing them to accept Fidesz’s leading role, and facilitating their collaboration, preferably forming a broad alliance.”
The “export of illiberal ideas, policies and narratives” is a “major tool” of Orban’s government, they add.
Big spenders
It’s a mission that demands significant resources, which the Hungarian taxpayer largely funds.
The Batthyany Lajos Foundation (BLA), a government-established body able to use billions in public money without oversight, channels much of the funding to the network via three main hubs, according to Hungarian researchers.
Subsidies for the BLA, which totalled 27 million euros last year, flow directly from the Prime Minister’s Office, which is run by Antal Rogan. A close aide to Orban, Rogan was added to the US Treasury Department’s sanctions list by the outgoing Biden administration over corruption suspicions, though was swiftly removed when Donald Trump became president.
Alapjogokert Kozpont (Center for Fundamental Rights), a think tank which produces anti-EU, anti-Ukrainian and anti-George Soros ‘research’, reportedly used some of the 4.5 billion forints (11 million euros) or so it receives from the BLA annually to organise the foreign edition of the US Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in Budapest. The latest gathering in May featured the leaders of the Dutch far-right Party for Freedom, ANO in Czechia, and the Danish People’s Party.
Another fulcrum in the network is Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), which runs colleges, educational courses and civic centres in Austria, Germany, Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine, as well as Hungary. MCC reportedly received an endowment of more than 1.3 billion euros from the Hungarian state in 2021, including significant stakes in highly-profitable state energy giant MOL and pharmaceutical company Gedeon Richter.
The following year it launched a satellite office in Brussels, where it hosts events attacking climate science, migrants and “woke ideology”, encourages and hijacks for its own purposes protests by farmers and others upset with EU policy, and publishes analysis by such libertarian luminaries as Frank Furedi to back up its positions.
The third hub of the influence network is The Danube Institute, whose mission is largely to promote Orban’s profile and ideology in the US. To that end, it works with hardline “conservative” groups such as the Heritage Foundation, organising events to gather and build links among right-wing populists across the US.
It also pays sympathetic academics, think tankers and journalists to write articles praising Orban’s policies and political strength, railing against the liberal elite, and defending fellow radical right operatives – Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has been one such beneficiary – for publication in the US press.
According to Hungarian investigative website Atlatszo, The Danube Institute spent 1.64 million dollars (1.44 million euros) between 2022 and 2024 on such advocates. A typical piece published last year featured a comparison of the migration policies of Hungary and the US state of Texas and their confrontations with the respective overarching authorities – the EU and US federal government – that have “failed to fulfil their duties to secure their borders or have been actively promoting pro-illegal immigration policies”.
“Orban provides the hub for many around Europe, and especially in Central and Eastern Europe,” says Daniel Hegedus at the German Marshal Fund. “The Hungarian infrastructure is vitally important. It provides the hub and resources for other players.”
‘Like a cancer’
While the core of the network is in CEE, Budapest’s urge to stoke Eurosceptism and steer EU policy has promoted Brussels to the top target for its influence network in recent years.
Hungary’s democratic backsliding as well as its opposition to support for Ukraine has helped drive confrontation with the European Commission and the freezing of billions in EU funds.
That’s a palpable hit, given that cash from Brussels is the key driver of the patronage system that underpins Orban’s political power. Hence, the regime’s angry rants against the EU have become more authentic and intrinsic.
Previously, the barbs directed at Brussels were largely political theatre for the domestic audience, points out Marius Dragomir at the Media and Journalism Research Center (MJRC), which is funded by Open Society Foundations, founded by the Hungarian-born US billionaire George Soros, whom Orban has long painted as a progressive bogeyman seeking to manipulate his country.
However, the Hungarian prime minister and his allies are not pushing to follow the UK out of the EU. Instead, “the Orban regime wants to bring about a ‘regime change’ in Europe to create a favourable external environment for its long-term domestic survival,” suggests Political Capital in the think tank’s report.
“This push into authoritarianism is a big problem for the EU,” says R Daniel Keleman at Georgetown University. “These governments are not anymore talking about leaving the EU à la Brexit. They want to remain in the EU and change it from within. They want to spread into the EU institutions and halls of power in Brussels like a cancer.”
To that end, Brussels-based media outlets linked to the Hungarian government publish stories demonising the EU elites for their purported subservience to immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, green activism and determination to crush the sovereignty of nation states.
These media outfits demand significant financial backing, since they appear to enjoy little commercial success.
The European Conservative was registered by MCC in March 2021. In its first two years, the English-language outlet was handed around 1.7 billion forints in a bid to put it on a path to becoming a leading news portal on EU affairs. But with that target appearing no nearer four years on, the link with the Budapest regime is becoming more blatant.
With the “transparency law” having hit the headlines last month, Fidesz MEP Andras Laszlo, head of the Patriots for Europe faction in the European Parliament, proudly advertised an interview in which he told the outlet that alongside preventing the import of “open borders ideology, gender ideology, BLM and other woke initiatives… We will prevent foreign-funded activism, too!”
Despite such ‘scoops’, the project continues to struggle. The generous stipends from Budapest allow it to spend a reported half a billion forints annually, but revenues are reported to be tiny.
Other outlets aimed at influencing the narrative in Brussels are less open about their connections to the Hungarian government.
The Brussels Signal was launched two years ago by Patrick Egan, a US citizen with links to the Republican Party and a former political advisor to Fidesz who is widely reported to have been awarded numerous Hungarian government contracts over the years.
Editor-in-chief Michael Mosbacher, who has regularly appeared at MCC events according to RFE/RL, said the outlet’s goal is to open up debates around migration, Ukraine and “the defence of freedom of speech in the EU”.
Alongside Egan, editorial staff at Brussels Signal insist they do not work for the Hungarian government. However, it’s unclear how the outlet is funded. The source of the 275,000 euros share capital used to establish publisher Remedia Europe in 2022 is unclear. Remedia lost close to 1 million euros in 2023.
An email from BIRN requesting comment from the outlet went unanswered.
Another company headed by Egan, FWD Affairs, publishes Remix, an online outlet that pushes illiberal and Eurosceptic narratives in the English language, with a focus on CEE. FWD Affairs received around 150 million forints of funding from BLA between 2020 and 2022, according to media reports.
Disseminating to the diaspora
While the Hungarian regime’s eye has been increasingly drawn to the EU and other targets to the west, CEE is the base camp of the influence network. Its operations have helped reinforce Orban’s political power in Hungary as well as making CEE the most fertile ground for his brand of right-wing populism.
Hungarian minorities clustered around Hungary’s borders, a legacy of the post-World War I Treaty of Trianon that stripped territory and populations from the country, were the initial target.
Orban has made Trianon a national grievance, using it to fuel nationalism among an electorate that extends to the nearby diaspora, many of whom have been handed Hungarian passports and a vote. Media outlets broadcast to these ethnic Hungarian communities to alert them to the flow of funds from Budapest into their schools, churches and even football clubs.
Romania’s north-western border regions are riddled with such civic and religious projects. MCC reportedly spends more than 2 million euros annually on a Transylvanian network of social centres. Meanwhile, media outlets, including Transylvania Now, a site also reportedly published by FWD Affairs, spread word of their value and of the sins of Bucharest.
The MJRC’s Dragomir says that while the impact of Orban’s wider network is hard to judge, the Hungarian strongman is getting bang for his buck in Romania among the Hungarian diaspora, which numbers around 1.2 million.
“This ethnic group is drenched in an avalanche of populist political rhetoric streaming from Budapest,” a report from MJRC reads, adding that this helps the “Hungarian media [to] garner… a significantly greater level of trust compared to their Romanian counterparts.”
The impact of this level of influence is that ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania have become a pillar of Orban’s political power in Hungary, with overwhelming levels of support for Fidesz.
Dragomir suggests that could be seen as a palpable issue for Romania’s national security, given that over 5 per cent of the population “looks largely to the Hungarian government for ideological leadership”.
Burying history and reviving the V4
The diaspora along Slovakia’s southern border regions have been blessed with increased cross-border forints and favours since Orban’s return to power in 2010, according to journalists from the Jan Kuciak Investigative Center in Bratislava.
As in Romania, significant sums have been handed to civic and cultural organisations as well as media outlets. While these media are traditionally linked to Slovakia’s ethnic Hungarian political forces, they also backed Robert Fico in his bid to return to power in late 2023.
Ma7.sk, Felvidek.ma and Korkep.sk are noted for a tide of pro-Russian reporting regarding the war in Ukraine, matching the outlook of both the Slovak and Hungarian premiers. The two leaders also share a declared distrust of liberal democracy and the EU, while Fico has even gone as far as to question Slovakia’s NATO membership.
With a likeminded partner installed in power in Bratislava, MCC opened a branch in Slovakia and has set about networking. Earlier this year it organised the Istropolis Summit, which gathered a roster of radical-right figures from across Europe and the US, including members of both the Hungarian and Slovak governments.
Fico has also readily adopted Orban’s political philosophy of “sovereignty”, and just introduced Slovakia’s own law against foreign-funded NGOs and media.
Earlier this year, facing huge protests against his policies and pro-Russian stance, the nominally social democratic prime minister claimed – without offering any supporting evidence – that foreign forces were preparing a coup against his government. He failed to mention the operations of the Hungarian-funded network in his country, despite a long history of antipathy and suspicion of the Hungarian diaspora, which makes up around 10 per cent of Slovakia’s population.
Hungary and Poland have traditionally enjoyed close relations over the centuries, and the latter’s nationalist-conservative forces are still viewed as Orban’s key regional partner in promoting his radical-right ideology.
The modern version of the Hungarian-Polish “brotherhood” harks back to at least 2015, when the nationalist-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party took power in Warsaw and adopted many elements of Orban’s playbook, including the takeover of public media and politicisation of the judiciary.
Despite a stumble in relations over Orban’s pro-Russian rhetoric after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which angered the staunch supporters of Kyiv within PiS, the links have been kept alive and are now recovering, analysts believe.
“The most inter-linked networks are still the Hungarian and Polish,” says Hegedus. “They work in synergy; they have the biggest intellectual capacity and institutional resources.”
The Catholic legal organisation and think tank Ordo Iuris Institute, viewed as the intellectual driver of hardline PiS policies on abortion, gender and LGBTQ+ issues, is the leading Polish player. Like MCC, it maintains links in Brussels and across Europe. Earlier this year, it joined its Hungarian counterpart to launch a new project entitled “The Future of the European Union,” which proposes dismantling the bloc’s current format.
June’s victory of Karol Nawrocki in Poland’s presidential election could further restore relations. Orban was elated as he congratulated the PiS-backed candidate on his “fantastic victory”, which he sees as testament to the role of the influence networks in achieving his ambition “to engineer a return of cooperation across Visegrad after it was all but killed by the war in Ukraine,” suggests Zsuzsana Szelenyi of the Central European University and a former member of Fidesz.
October’s parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic are the next date in the diary of Orban and the region’s illiberal forces. Polls suggest Andrej Babis’s ANO party should win by some margin to oust the current centre-right “democratic coalition”, which is how the four parties that make up the government positioned themselves in the last election.
Babis has embraced more extreme positions since losing office in 2021, and last year ANO joined Orban and Austria’s Freedom Party in founding the Patriots for Europe grouping in the European Parliament.
Babis’s strong lead in the polls means that most speculation in Prague surrounds only whether the the billionaire former prime minister will team up with a mainstream party or invite extremist partners into a governing coalition.
Radical-right forces linked to hardline elements in the Catholic Church are lining up to push the latter choice, although their task is more challenging than that of their Polish peers in one of Europe’s least religious countries. The Prague-based investigative outlet Hlidaci Pes points out that a roster of regional figures linked to Orban’s networks attended last year’s St Adalbert Conference, organised by the Patrimonium Sancti Adalberti association. Leading ANO MP Patrik Nacher and Cardinal Dominik Duka, a firm opponent of abortion and LBGTQ+ rights, both attended the event, which was supported by the Centre for Fundamental Rights and the European Conservative.
Former Czech prime minister and president Vaclav Klaus, whose pro-Russian stance has deepened alongside his right-wing authoritarianism over the last decade, is something of a figurehead. He has encouraged Czechia’s illiberals and anti-establishment forces to utilise the power of the Trump tornado.
Tomio Okamura, the half-Japanese leader of the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party – currently polling at around 10 per cent – recently hit out at “political NGOs, those pro-immigration and gender ones”.
Aspiring autocrats
Excited by the reactionary tide washing across Europe, Budapest has also tried to push its network into other regions, with a view to supporting aspiring autocrats.
To the south, Fidesz-affilliated figures bought up media in Balkan countries like Slovenia, in a bid to support Orban ally and the then-prime minister Janez Jansa (who was turfed out of office in 2022). A similar tactic was used to try to boost the fortunes of the former Macedonian prime minister Nikola Gruevski, who was granted asylum in Hungary in 2018 after being sentenced to two years for abuse of office.
The focus has been moving west as Orban sniffs out new opportunities. The V4NA News Agency was an earlier effort to establish a base in the UK. Registered in London in 2018 with Orban’s enigmatic spin doctor, Arpad Habony, as the point man, it is owned by Mediaworks Hungary, a media holding controlled by Lorinc Meszaros, a former gas-fitter and Orban’s childhood friend who is now Hungary’s richest man.
However, V4NA’s slim operations appear to actually be based in Budapest, from where it publishes an average of around one article per day. That does little for its commercial profile. V4NA Ltd.’s liabilities, which stood at 1.6 million pounds (1.9 million euros) at the end of 2024, rise by around 20,000 pounds annually.
Both MCC and the Center for Fundamental Rights have become busy in Spain – alongside Ordo Iuris – as they eye the rising fortunes of the far-right Vox party. Also a member of the Patriots for Europe grouping in the European Parliament, Vox has depended on loans from MBH Bank, which is part-owned by Meszaros, to fund recent election campaigns.
Under its former name of MKB, the Hungarian bank has also funded France’s Rassemblement National (RN) of Marine le Pen.
There’s little sign that Orban’s network has sought to actively expand into the US by building its own institutions or buying up media, as it has across Europe. Yet, as mentioned, huge sums have been spent on lobbyists charged with promoting Orban’s profile and policies, and building ties with major right-wing think tanks such as The Heritage Foundation. This has offered a route to link up with Republican institutions in the hope of shaping US policymaking, says Szelenyi of the Central European University
Challenges
Orban remains aware that economics is key to politics. Alongside the direct investment of state funds in media and civil society, he has encouraged commercial investment in Central Europe and the Balkans via friendly oligarchs as a way to expand influence and raise more funds. These include state power company MVM and telecommunications and IT provider 4iG.
“Orban realises he needs raw economic power as well as a populist ideology,” says Dragomir.
However, the Hungarian prime minister is facing challenges from all sides. Hungary’s stuttering economy means that Orban will likely struggle to fund any significant further expansion of his media and civil society network, believe analysts. At the same time, the EU has belatedly started to restrict some of the billions in funds it sends to Budapest annually on account of the proven widespread corruption, cronyism and rule-of-law violations there.
Orban’s fresh assault on the independent media and civil society supports those voices calling for the European Commission to squeeze Hungary much harder, Dragomir asserts. And Budapest appears to sense that the mood in Brussels is hardening.
In early June, the government delayed the proposed “transparency law”, and the bill could even be dropped, according to Hungarian investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi, due to internal disagreements within the cabinet over fears that the EU could trigger Article 7 – a measure which enables the suspension of EU membership rights, such as voting rights in the Council of the EU.
Brussels also has in its sights Hungary’s Sovereignty Protection Office, a body set up in late 2023 and handed powers to probe supposed ‘foreign agents’.
However, the EU’s infringement procedures are notoriously slow. For the time being and, crucially, in the run-up to the 2026 election, the Sovereignty Protection Office continues to lead the regime’s assault on its critics, able to demand detailed financial information and publish its suspicions publicly.
The need for unanimity on the Council of the EU has blocked the triggering of Article 7 for years. Therefore, as well as a mechanism to push illiberal narratives into the mainstream, the Hungarian influence network is also designed to maintain allies that will have Hungary’s back on the Council.
Denmark, which on July 1 took over the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, said it wants to deploy all legal measures against Hungary over its violations of the bloc’s fundamental rights, including Article 7. Other opinion-makers argue that might not be such a good idea ahead of an election which, if the polls are to be believed, Orban looks anyhow set to lose.
As such, many critics insist that hard cash remains Brussels’ key source of leverage.
“Article 7 is a distraction,” Keleman declares. “The focus should be on the money. EU funds function in the way that oil money does in petrostates – it’s used to maintain the patronage system that keeps everything running. The EU needs to stop contributing.”
