Viktor Orbán

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Viktor Orbán (2018)

Viktor Mihály Orbán [ ˈviktor ˈmihaːj ˈorbaːn ] ( Hungarian Orbán Viktor ; born May 31, 1963 in Székesfehérvár ) is a Hungarian politician , co-founder and, with an interruption, since 1993 chairman of the Fidesz party - Hungarian Citizens' Union . He was Prime Minister of Hungary from 1998 to 2002 and again since 2010 ; in between he was opposition leader . At international level he has been Vice President of the European People's Party since 2002 and one of the Vice Presidents of the Christian Democratic International since 2001 .

Since he was elected Prime Minister in 2010, Orbán has been accused of systematically restricting human rights in Hungary. Orban ruled by decree during the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent declaration of a state of emergency . He was thus de facto classified as a dictator by various leading media .

Career

Orbán grew up as the eldest son of an agricultural engineer and a teacher and speech therapist in Székesfehérvár. There he graduated from grammar school in a German-speaking class and passed his Matura in 1981 .

After completing his military service from 1981 to 1982, he began studying law at the Loránd Eötvös University , which he graduated in 1987. From 1987 to 1989 he worked in Budapest at the Ministry of Agriculture and Food and lived in Szolnok . From April 1988 he worked for the Soros Foundation of Central Europe Research Group , from which he received a scholarship in September 1989 to study the history of English liberal philosophy at Pembroke College in Oxford . He broke off his studies in 1990 before the Hungarian parliamentary elections and went into politics.

Political activity

Political career

Viktor Orbán during his first term as Prime Minister in 2001

He began his political career as chairman of the youth organization of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (Communist Youth Association, Kommunista Ifjúsági Szövetség - KISZ) in the high school he attended. In 1988 he was one of the founding fathers of the Federation of Young Democrats ( Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége , Fidesz). He became known nationwide for his speech in the context of the reburial of the national idol of the people's uprising of 1956, Imre Nagy , in which he spoke out as the spokesman for the university youth for the withdrawal of the Soviet troops stationed in the People's Republic of Hungary . This speech earned him partly admiration and partly severe criticism.

After the turnaround in 1989 he became a member of the committee of the newly founded Fidesz party (i.e. the party's governing body, as there was no chairman at the time). In 1993 he was elected party chairman. He held this post until his resignation in 2000 and again from 2003.

Viktor Orbán has been a member of parliament since 1990 . Between 1990 and 1993 he was parliamentary group leader.

Under his leadership, the Fidesz party, considered liberal, became the dominant conservative party in Hungary. In 1998 he won the parliamentary elections and formed a government of Fidesz with the conservative Small Farmers Party ( FKgP ) and the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF). During its first reign , Hungary joined NATO and a large part of its public employees were changed under government orders. In 2002, his party lost the election against the then opposition socialists with the top candidate Péter Medgyessy .

Orbán also held several international positions: between 1992 and 2000 he was one of the vice-presidents of the Liberal International ; In 2002 he became one of the Vice-Presidents of the European People's Party and remains so to this day (January 4, 2012).

A year after the parliamentary elections, Orbán was re-elected Fidesz party leader in 2003 . After his return to the party leadership, the number of members of the party increased. He was considered the most promising candidate against the incumbent socialist prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány , but lost on April 8, 2006 just against him. Before the second round of elections (April 23, 2006) he renounced the office of head of government in favor of his former coalition partner, the Democratic Forum MDF , but was unable to reverse the majority.

On May 29, 2010, the parliament elected Orbán Prime Minister

In the first round of parliamentary elections on April 11, 2010 , Fidesz won a clear election with 52.73 percent of the votes cast. On May 29, 2010 the new parliament elected Viktor Orbán as the new Prime Minister.

The governing coalition of Fidesz and the KDNP won the parliamentary elections on April 6, 2014 with 44.87 percent of the list votes and 44.11 percent of the constituency votes, 133 parliamentary seats and thus the two-thirds majority required for changes to the constitutional laws. Orbán was re-elected Prime Minister on May 10, 2014.

In the 2014 European elections , the alliance received 51.49% of the vote.

Domestic politics

On social issues, Fidesz under Orbán represents right-wing conservative positions. He particularly emphasizes the role of the Christian churches and the traditional family. Authoritarianism and nationalism are deeply anchored in Fidesz's rhetoric and politics; Because of Hungary's EU membership and the party's government responsibility, the observers hoped that national positions would be moderated. Compared to the economic policy of the SZDSZ, which is liberal in this respect and its own first term in office in the years 1998-2002, the Fidesz party is, due to the poor economic situation in Hungary, on a partly considerably changed, more state-interventionist and dirigistic basis Course. For the period after the 2010 election, the party announced tax cuts as its main goal. This was already implemented in July 2010 by reducing the income tax to 16% “flat” (previously 16–44%) and the profit tax of small and medium-sized enterprises to 10% (previously 19%). Due to the high national debt, however, a one-time tax increase in the form of a bank levy was decided and levied.

After Orbán came to power, the state's staffing system was heavily restructured and the net severance payments for laid-off workers were reduced. The constitutional court overturned these changes in severance pay. As a result, in November 2010, Fidesz-MPSZ, with a two-thirds majority in parliament behind it, restricted the constitutional court's jurisdiction in budgetary issues.

The obligation, decided in 1997 and valid since 1998, to pay into a private pension insurance (and less into the public pension insurance) led to large deficits in the statutory pension funds, which had to be covered by the state budget in order to cover a large part of the pensions paid out. In order to reorganize the indebted state budget , in December 2010 the government shifted deposits from the mandatory private pension funds amounting to the equivalent of around 10 billion euros into a "fund for pension reform and debt reduction". This action was controversially criticized by some media as “pension theft”, but Orbán himself justified it as an emergency rescue of the Hungarian pension system.

On April 18, 2011, with the votes of FIDESZ, a new constitution , valid since January 1, 2012 , was passed, in which the principles include the reference to God, the Hungarian crown ( St. Stephen's crown ) and the terms fatherland, Christianity, family, loyalty , Faith, love and national pride are anchored. In addition, the state was renamed from the Republic of Hungary to Hungary , the republican form of government thus deleted from the official name of the state, whereby the constitution still defines the form of government of Hungary as a republic.

The new constitution provides that the - currently consisting of three Orbán followers - Budget Council of the Central Bank will have the right, the Parliament resolve the country if the household with the standards of the new constitution was not adopted accordingly. The powers of the Constitutional Court were restricted, especially in the economic and social fields. Western media reported that not every citizen was allowed to sue this court, but only the popular lawsuit did not apply. This means that every citizen can still file a complaint before the Constitutional Court, but only if his / her fundamental rights are affected by the challenged law. This change in the law was also welcomed by lawyers because it would reduce the burden on the constitutional court.

The possibilities for Hungarians to influence politics through referendums were considerably restricted. For example, there may be no referendums on constitutional amendments or on electoral laws .

After Orbán had not responded to the EU Commission's criticism for weeks , it opened three proceedings against Hungary in mid-January 2012 for violating several EU treaties .

At the end of January 2012, Hungary saw the largest demonstration since the fall of the Wall. Between 100,000 and 400,000 participants demonstrated against the interference of Western European politicians and the, in their opinion, tendentious reporting on Hungary in Western Europe. They thus committed themselves to the government and Orbán personally. However, in the recent past [when?] There have also been demonstrations by the opposition against Orbán's policy, but with far fewer participants.

In his speech at the Fidesz party conference on September 28, 2013, Orbán said that the “bankers, the greedy multinationals, the Brussels bureaucrats who are in their wages and of course their lackeys here in the country” would “march” against Hungary, and spoke of "international big business". The cultural scientist Magdalena Marsovszky accused him of using coded anti-Semitic argumentation structures. But the Orbán government is also the first Hungarian government to admit that the country shared responsibility for the Holocaust and to apologize for it. On the other hand, a memorial decided by the Orbán government in December 2013, which was erected in Budapest in July 2014 and, according to the critics, portrays Hungary too much as a defenseless, incapable of acting victim of Nazi Germany, is criticized; the historian Krisztián Ungváry spoke of a “memento of national self-acquittal”.

In April 2014, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Hungarian church law, passed two years earlier by the Orbán government, according to which religious communities had to be recognized by parliament, violated the European Convention on Human Rights and freedom of religion and assembly, as the state was in a neutral position leave. According to its own statements, the government wanted to act against the "wild growth" of religions and the improper acquisition of state funds. Several small communities led by the Christian Mennonite Church in Hungary had sued. Also in April 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Orbán had broken EU law with the dismissal of top data protection officer András Jóri in 2012, almost three years before his term of office ended. This measure was part of a reform aimed at establishing a state authority to protect the right to information.

After Orbán had called for a public debate on the reintroduction of the death penalty in Hungary at the beginning of 2015 , he rejected this issue after criticism from other European countries and the threat to exclude Hungary from the EU if it were reintroduced. Observers are of the opinion that Orbán is increasingly addressing issues of the right-wing extremist Jobbik , which at the time, according to opinion polls, was only just behind his party Fidesz. Critics wanted to see a similar motivation in the government's nationwide poster campaign "If you come to Hungary ...", where people arriving in Hungary are asked - albeit only in Hungarian - to "respect Hungarian culture" or "not allow Hungarians to work to take away ". In the eyes of the critics, these appeals were apparently aimed specifically at immigrants and were therefore “simple-minded”, “primitive” and “inhumane”. Orbán himself justified the poster campaign and replied to the critics that it “is primarily aimed at smugglers and emphasizes that Hungary is a friendly country; it does not say that you cannot come here, but that you have to obey the law ”. At the same time he spoke out in favor of both tightening the Hungarian immigration laws and the option of closing the border with Serbia. In his view, the Hungarians are “an endangered species”. According to him, investors, artists and scholars from non-Christian countries are welcome, but they “do not want to mix with them on a mass scale”. At the end of July 2015, Orbán spoke at the Bálványos Summer University in Băile Tuşnad, Romania, of “hundreds of millions of people in the African hinterland who wanted to escape poverty” and described the “masses of illegal immigrants” as a threat to Europe's cultural identity. He took the view that Europe should "continue to be the Europeans" and criticized the European left for wanting to use immigration to weaken or eliminate national structures.

On June 17, 2015, the Hungarian government announced that in order to curb the immigration of refugees (especially Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, who in most cases only use the country as a transit station to Western Europe) from Serbia, the 175 km long border with Serbia with a 4 m high fence . The idea of ​​a border fence was first brought up by the Jobbik mayor of the southern Hungarian border community Ásotthalom , László Toroczkai , in early 2015 . Criticism came both from Serbia, which pointed to its role as a transit country, and from a spokeswoman for the EU Commission, who recalled the demolition of fences and borders in Europe. Orbán made it clear that Hungary distinguishes between political refugees and those who immigrate for economic reasons:

“We do not share the position of the European right-wing extremists. They're against Islam. We don't at all. We are against immigration. There are countries that have taken this risk. We did not accept it and we do not want it in the future either. We respect that France or Germany took a different path, but we have a right to have ours also respected. We don't want a multicultural society. "

- Viktor Orbán, May 2015

In July 2016, Orbán accused the “EU elite” of denying the link he saw between immigration and terrorism. Europe is "unable to protect its citizens and its external borders". He also cited the refugee crisis as the main reason for the outcome of the British vote to leave the EU and promised not to allow refugees to move through Hungary again. At the end of August, he announced that he would be reinforcing the fence with electronic monitoring systems and paved paths for the border guards. According to him, this new system will be able to withstand large crowds. At the same time, he said, everything was prepared so that - in addition to the existing barbed wire-reinforced fences on the borders with Croatia and Serbia - such a fence could also be erected on the Romanian border at any time. According to Orbán, there is so much in stock of fence material manufactured in Hungarian penal institutions that “several hundred kilometers of fence have already been sold to Macedonia, Slovenia and Bulgaria”. At the beginning of October 2016, Amnesty International reported that refugees were being detained in Hungary for weeks and months for no reason and that they were regularly victims of abuse. According to Amnesty, this, as well as the lack of medical treatment or completely inadequate hygienic conditions in overcrowded camps, is a targeted strategy to deter refugees.

Orbán had a referendum on the EU quotas for the distribution of asylum seekers on October 2, 2016 . (The question was: “Do you want the European Union to be able to prescribe the compulsory settlement of non-Hungarian citizens in Hungary even without the consent of the Hungarian Parliament ?”) Although 98% of those who took part voted against the quotas The referendum - despite the 30 million euro national consultation of the ruling party and, according to SZ, xenophobic propaganda - was invalid under Hungarian law due to insufficient participation, as only 40% of those entitled to vote had submitted a valid ballot paper and thus the required quorum of 50% was not achieved . The day after the vote, a spokesman for Viktor Orbán stated that the referendum result was "politically and legally binding". With a turnout of over 50%, parliament and government would have been constitutionally obliged to implement the voting decision. That is why Orbán announced that he would submit a constitutional amendment to parliament so that the will of the people would be incorporated into a law and that the result would also have consequences in Brussels.

At the beginning of November 2016, a constitutional amendment sought by Orbán, according to which non-EU citizens can only settle in Hungary according to Hungarian law, also failed. In a parliamentary vote, only 131 Fidesz MPs voted in favor, missing the required two-thirds majority by two votes. The Jobbik -Parteichef Gábor Vona had made its approval of the abolition of the system depends on it rich non-EU foreigners allowed to buy a right of establishment in Hungary. Orbán was not prepared to change the rules of this kind. Jobbik stayed away from the vote, as did almost the entire left or liberal opposition, of which three parliamentarians who were present voted against.

In February 2017, Orbán announced that Hungary would take in refugees, but only "true refugees". He cited citizens of western countries as examples: "The horror-filled German, Dutch, French, Italian politicians and journalists, those Christians who have been forced to leave their homeland and who have lost their Europe in their own homeland, find it with us again".

At the beginning of March 2017, Orbán stated that Hungary was “under siege” and that migration was the “ Trojan horse of terrorism”. Almost at the same time, parliament decided with a large majority that in future all refugees over the age of 14 should be accommodated in transit zones at the national borders for the duration of their proceedings. Sharp criticism came from civil rights activists and the UN refugee agency UNHCR . In addition, an additional high-security fence with motion sensors is to be erected on the Serbian border by May.

In June 2017 Orbán paid tribute to the former Hungarian ruler and Hitler ally Miklos Horthy (1868–1954) as an "exceptional statesman". Orbán did not mention his co-responsibility for the Holocaust. Horthy had approved the transport of Hungarian Jews outside of Budapest to German extermination camps. The Union of Hungarian Jewish Congregations ( Mazsihisz ) and the World Jewish Congress (WJC) sharply criticized Orbán's “glorification of an ally of Hitler”. Orbán stressed that his speech was "worded very precisely".

The Orbán government also stepped up its action against organizations that are involved in refugee aid in Hungary and that cover most of their costs from abroad. Officially, the draft law (known as the “Stop Soros Package”) referred to “illegal migrants”. The content was a 25 percent penalty tax and the authority to expel foreign employees of such organizations from the country. Orbán accuses US billionaire George Soros , who is financially involved in humanitarian refugee aid and who was born in Hungary , of wanting to relocate people from other cultures and thus rob Europe of its “Christian and national identity”. The campaign against Soros was drafted in 2010 by the political advisors of the Republican Party from the USA Arthur J. Finkelstein and George Eli Birnbaum for the Fidesz party. Finkelstein was one loud magazine to consultants, the "negative campaigning" ( negative campaigning ) conducted, polarized the electorate, a bogeyman invented and fomented a climate of fear. Because Soros is Jewish, the campaign against him has been criticized for taking up elements of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories .

“There is a population change going on in Europe . Partly so that speculators like Soros himself can make a lot of money. They want to destroy Europe because they hope for great profits from it. On the other hand, they also have ideological motives. They believe in a multicultural Europe, they don't like Christian Europe, they don't like Christian traditions in Europe and they don't like Christians. "

- Viktor Orbán, July 2018

In a State of the Union address in February 2018, Orbán spoke out against migration and an alleged “ Islamization ”. "Dark clouds" lay over Europe and nations would "cease to exist" because Europe was "overrun" without it being aware of it. At the same time, he spoke of the "decline of Christian culture", a "Muslim expansion", directed accusations against the opposition who did not support him, and reiterated the restrictive measures taken by his government.

In the run-up to the 2018 parliamentary election, the results of investigations by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) played a role in allegations of corruption and the enrichment of Orbán's family with EU funding; however, Fidesz remained in government. Orbán is now one of the wealthiest citizens of Hungary.

At the end of February 2019, the International Auschwitz Committee accused Orbán of “ deforming the politics of memory of the Holocaust ”. Orbán tries to suppress the Hungarian involvement in the harassment and deportation of the Hungarian Jews to the National Socialist extermination camps from the national consciousness. In addition, his rhetoric uses "shabby, subtle and efficient way" time and again anti-Semitic prejudices. Also Matthias Krupa certified Orbán in time , "more blatant" anti-Semitic motives and conspiracy to use. He carefully avoided calling the Jews by name, but used the topoi of classic anti-Semitism - from (Jewish) "financial speculators" to (homeless) "cosmopolitanism" that threaten the Christian West. According to Krupa, Orbán is not an anti-Semite, but “a cynical power politician who can use any means”.

At the end of December, the government majority in parliament approved new provisions that affect the rights and freedoms of opposition MPs: In future, two or more political groups will no longer be able to merge to form a new parliamentary group. Members who were elected to parliament as non-party members are no longer allowed to join a parliamentary group and even non-party members are no longer allowed to form their own parliamentary group, even if they have the required number of members. According to Orbán and his Fidesz party, these measures would better reflect the will of the electorate, while observers see the quasi-abolition of the right to form political groups as a restriction of the political leeway of the opposition, which is spread across several parties and popular non-party personalities. Stricter penalties are also provided for MPs who disrupt parliamentary sessions or who simply express their protest with banners or posters.

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic , Orbán claimed there was "the frontline called migration and there was the coronavirus epidemic". “Foreigners” - migrants via the Iran route - and also foreign students brought the virus to Hungary. Therefore the universities have been closed. According to the political scientist Péter Krekó of the Budapest Institute Political Capital, the government and its affiliated media are looking for scapegoats, since the health and education systems have "suffered most from the restrictive fiscal policy of the government [...]". Orbán had been given extensive special powers against the pandemic by parliament, which would enable him to govern by ordinance without a time limit. No elections or referendums may take place during the emergency. Penalties for violating quarantine regulations and for spreading false news have been massively tightened. Journalists feared they could face prison terms for critical reporting. Critics saw the emergency ordinances as an instrumentalization of the corona crisis, with which Orbán wanted to expand his position of power. Jan Puhl found in Der Spiegel that Orbán had "created a dictatorship that does not kill its opponents, but mercilessly ignores them - and that in the middle of Europe".

In a letter to the heads of several member parties of the European People's Party (EPP) at the end of March 2020, Orbán accused party chairman Donald Tusk , who is considered a critic of Orbán, of using the language of “European liberals and leftists”. Tusk should be urged to stop “sowing the seeds of division”. For his part, Tusk, in a letter to the leaders of the EPP parties, accused Orbán of " using the pandemic to create a permanent state of emergency"; that is "politically dangerous and morally unacceptable".

Media policy

In connection with the Hungarian EU Council Presidency in 2011 , Orbán came under international criticism. Fears have been expressed on several occasions that the provisions of the new media law, which has already come into force, would severely restrict the freedom of the press in Hungary. It is particularly emphasized that the newly created media supervisory authority Nemzeti Média- és Hírközlési Hatóság (NMHH) could abuse its broad powers as it is not controlled by parliament. The existing media council was now only made up of members of the ruling party. According to the allegations, the Fidesz party controls the state television broadcaster Magyar Televízió and also exerts influence on other important media in the country. The social democratic daily Népszava appeared on December 3, 2010 in protest with a blank front page. The literary magazine Élet és Irodalom and the weekly magazine Magyar Narancs also followed suit .

Due to his striving for media control and the generally predominantly national-conservative politics, Orbán was accused of, among other things, hostility to democracy. According to a statement made by the winner of the Zurich Journalism Prize , Bernhard Odehnal , Orbán came to power democratically, but his government is now abolishing democracy . In an interview with the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger , Odehnal says that all classic instances of democratic control have been weakened, abolished or brought under the control of the government. In contrast, Jan Mainka , who publishes the right - wing German-language Budapest newspaper , describes the West's criticism of the Hungarian media law as completely exaggerated. The Hungarian government defends itself against its critics from abroad with the argument that the media law contains nothing new that is not legal practice in Western democracies. In the course of the restructuring of public service broadcasting , all four Hungarian television stations, seven radio programs and the Magyar Távirati Iroda (MTI) news agency, founded in 1880, were merged under the umbrella of a media service and asset fund (MTVA). In July 2011, the new top management he appointed began with mass layoffs of initially 600 employees, with a further 400 to follow in September.

At the beginning of June 2014, Orbán's Fidesz party tabled a legislative proposal according to which media companies would have to pay up to 40 percent tax on advertising revenues. Critics see this not only as fiscal goals, but also as an attempt to bring independent, non-government-controlled media to the edge of their existence.

In October 2014, Der Spiegel reported after research that the public service media in Hungary were practically "aligned". Now the Hungarian government would also take massive action against the private press organs. According to Viviane Reding , the freedom of the press in Hungary no longer deserves its name. The government's measures are "a Putinization", according to Reding, "the opposite of everything we have built in Europe."

A planned Internet tax, which, according to Orbán, was a “purely technical change to the existing telecommunications tax”, was withdrawn for the time being at the end of October 2014 after popular protests. However, Orbán reserved the right to discuss this issue again in 2015 as part of a “national consultation on Internet regulation”. The protests that continued after the temporary withdrawal of this tax were directed not only against the media but also increasingly against the educational, economic and social policies of the Orbán government.

The following important information is missing from this article or section:
The Orbans decree is still missing here, with which he withdrew the establishment of an association of government-related private media companies with over 400 press products ( Central European Press and Media Foundation / hu: Közép-Európai Sajtó és Média Alapítvány ) from antitrust review.
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Educational policy

After the Orbán government passed a law in 2017 that imposes new conditions on foreign universities, the Central European University (CEU) , founded by US investor and philanthropist George Soros , has to relocate its US- accredited courses from Budapest to Vienna, like them Announced in early December 2018. The new law stipulates that the educational institution also teaches in its home country - which would be the case in the case of the CEU - and there must be a bilateral agreement at government level for operation in Hungary. According to the university, an agreement negotiated between the US state of New York and the Hungarian government was ready for signature, but was not signed by the Hungarian side. According to critics, this "Lex CEU" should force the university to leave the country, the reason being the liberal orientation. So far it is unclear whether the degree courses accredited in Hungary will remain in Budapest.

At the beginning of July 2019, on the initiative of the right-wing national government of Orbán, parliament approved a law reforming the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) by 131 votes in favor and 53 against (199 MPs in total ). This stipulates that a new body, whose members will be appointed by the government, will administer the research funds in the future. Parts of the property as well as the general administration of the MTA should also be subject to the control of this body. Critics see behind this legislative initiative an attack on the freedom of science and an attempt to silence critical scientists. According to the director of the academy, László Lovász , the measure contravenes "European principles of research funding" and threatens the freedom of science. Scientific communities in Hungary, European umbrella associations and Germany's ten most important scientific organizations protested with open letters. The latter also rejected the government rationale that Hungary was following the example of the non-university research institutions in Germany with the restructuring, analogous to the dissolution of the GDR academies. The integration of many academy institutes into the Leibniz Association was "not only dependent on a very strict evaluation of their scientific quality by the independent German Science Council ", it also brought "the institutes directly into scientific self-administration and into reliable funding" . They also criticize that the reform is intended to exclusively support research in the public interest, with this interest being defined by the government. Gender research, for example, is classified as an ideology and excluded from funding as an alleged “non-science”.

According to the cultural scientist Magdalena Marsovszky, a "hostility to science and intellectuals" are characteristic of the system. Modern science and the formation of the post- enlightenment period would be held responsible for the “de-spiritualization of humanity” and liberal intellectuals would be understood as “materialistic manipulators”. On the other hand, a “pseudoscience” is being promoted, which is supposed to search for the “ancient spiritual tradition believed to be lost”, the traces of which are suspected to be in the near and far East. An institute for genealogy was set up in 2019 to research the biological and cultural origins of the Magyar .

Foreign policy

Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin in February 2015

During his visit to Bratislava in December 2010 , Orbán refrained from talks with the Hungarian-Slovak party Most-Híd, which was part of the government, and instead met with a national conservative party of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia , the Hungarian Coalition Party , which caused tensions of the Slovak government. On July 24, 2011, Orbán gave a keynote speech on the occasion of the Tusványos Summer Academy in Transylvania, Romania , in which he outlined his vision of the Hungarian nation inside and outside Hungary's national borders.

Regarding Trump's Jerusalem Initiative, Viktor Orbán stopped an intended joint EU condemnation (“joint declaration”) of Trump's plans to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by veto on December 6, 2017. Orbán does not consider a conviction necessary. He is also considering moving the Hungarian embassy to Jerusalem. At a meeting with representatives of the right-wing Belgian group Schild & Vrienden in Băile Tuşnad, Romania, in July 2018, he called on them to "stand up" and "fight".

Legal classification from the German side

A working group report by the German Society for Foreign Policy came to the conclusion in 2015 that, after five years under Orban, Hungary was a free and democratic state based on the rule of law, but that it had systematic weaknesses. In April 2020 the DGAP director commented: "The fact that Viktor Orbán continues to expand his authoritarian power in Hungary in a way that endangers democracy, but that the European Commission does not mention Hungary by name in its statement, undermines the value base of the EU." ( [1 ] )

Honors

In 2015, the Bavarian SPD parliamentary group chairman , Markus Rinderspacher , demanded that Orbán be deprived of the Franz Josef Strauss Prize. Rinderspacher cited "Orban's attacks on basic democratic principles and the solidarity principles of the European community of values" as the reason. In 2020, Rinderspacher renewed his demand. The occasion was Orbán's controversial law to restrict the rights of the Hungarian parliament in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic .

Private

Viktor Orbán has been married to the lawyer Anikó Lévai since 1986 . The couple has five children. Orbán is a member of the Hungarian Reformed Church , his wife is a Roman Catholic .

Orbán is the founder of the national soccer academy Puskás Akadémia FC , his weekend house is in the direct vicinity of the Pancho Arena in Felcsút .

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Viktor Orbán  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Orban no longer applies for Vice-Chairmanship in the EPP Wednesday, October 3, 2012
  2. ↑ Keno Verseck, DER SPIEGEL: The iron process - DER SPIEGEL - politics. Retrieved April 25, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Amnesty International : EU must do more to protect human rights in Hungary , January 24, 2012
  4. ↑ Der Spiegel: Authoritarian Government: The Orbán System Steals Hungary's Soul , March 18, 2012
  5. ↑ Die Welt : Human rights activists sharply denounce Hungary , May 16, 2013
  6. ↑ Der Standard : Orbán: The Democratic Mask Has Fallen , August 29, 2014
  7. ↑ Silviu Mihai: On the way to a dictatorship. In: The time . March 21, 2020, accessed April 25, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Reinhard Veser: Emergency in Hungary: With Viktor Orbán into the dictatorship . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( Online [accessed April 25, 2020]).
  9. ↑ FOCUS Online: With the help of the Corona crisis, Orban now wants to make himself a dictator. Retrieved April 25, 2020 .
  10. ↑ ORF at / agencies red: Emergency law passed: Hungary's parliament de facto disempowered. March 30, 2020, accessed April 25, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Covid-19 - Hungary lifts the state of emergency. Retrieved June 18, 2020 .
  12. ↑ József Debreczeni: Orbán Viktor, Osiris kiadó, Budapest, 2002, ISBN 963-389-443-3 .
  13. ^ Weekly magazine of the Austrian party SPÖ ( Memento from January 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ Viktor Orban re-elected as Prime Minister of Hungary. In: The world . May 10, 2014, accessed May 10, 2010 .
  15. ↑ Tagesschau: Viktor Orban, populist and sole ruler? Viktor Orban, populist and sole ruler? ( Memento of April 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), accessed June 30, 2013.
  16. ↑ Uni Kassel AG Peace Research: Hungary under the grip of the right , April 13, 2010.
  17. ↑ Ralf Streck: Hungary does not want to continue saving according to the IMF's whistle. In: Telepolis , July 20, 2010.
  18. ↑ Gábor Kerényi: King Orbán grinds democracy. In: Neues Deutschland , November 1, 2010.
  19. ↑ Parliament curtailed the powers of the constitutional court. In: Der Standard , November 16, 2010.
  20. ↑ 'Az IMF kényszerítette Magyarországot' In: Népszabadság , August 9, 2010 (Hungarian, partial German translation )
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personal data
SURNAME Orbán, Viktor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Orbán, Viktor Mihály
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian politician, Member of Parliament
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Székesfehérvár , Hungary