MEPs to hold debate after Viktor Orbán given right to rule by decree indefinitely
The European parliament will discuss Hungary’s controversial coronavirus laws on Thursday, the latest showdown between Brussels and Budapest over rule of law under Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán.
In late March Hungary’s parliament gave Orbán the right to rule by decree indefinitely as part of a package of measures aimed at fighting coronavirus.
Continue reading...Trans people fear more discrimination as Orbán pushes through law defining gender based on ‘sex at birth’
Hungary’s rightwing government looks likely to push through legislation that will end the legal recognition of trans people by defining gender as “biological sex based on primary sex characteristics and chromosomes” and thus making it impossible for people to legally change their gender.
Trans people and rights activists say the law, which has been introduced into parliament as attention is focused on the coronavirus pandemic, will increase discrimination and intolerance towards trans people. Many will try to leave the country, while those who do not have that chance will face daily humiliations.
Continue reading...Belgium appears hardest hit on paper, but not all countries count non-hospital fatalities
Every day, the statistics bring more grim headlines: “Italian death toll passes 20,000”, “Record UK daily death toll”, “Europe’s fatalities pass 100,000”. Across the world, people await national updates on the coronavirus – and compare their country with others.
The comparison game has been especially marked in Belgium, which on paper has the unhappy title of highest number of Covid-19 deaths per capita in Europe. Belgium – population 11.5 million – has counted at least 6,675 deaths since the start of the outbreak, more than Germany, which is nearly eight times more populous.
Continue reading...Thousands live in squalor due to policies of exclusion and deprivation, says study
Europe’s Roma communities are often living on polluted wastelands and lacking running water or sanitation in their homes as a result of “environmental racism”, a report has concluded.
The European Environmental Bureau (EEB), a pan-European network of green NGOs, found Roma communities were often excluded from basic services, such as piped drinking water, sanitation and rubbish collection, while frequently living at or near some of the dirtiest sites in Europe, such as landfills or contaminated industrial land.
Continue reading...Reporters say measures are being used to deny them access to information on pandemic
Hungarian journalists say a new law supposedly aimed at fighting the coronavirus will make objective reporting of the pandemic harder and leave them open to facing court cases or even jail time for their reporting.
The measures, in place since Monday, have been roundly criticised for the sweeping powers they hand to the nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, to rule by decree. Another part of the bill provides penalties of up to five years in prison for those spreading misinformation during the pandemic.
Continue reading...Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland failed to comply with 2015 programme, ECJ says
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic broke European law when they failed to give refuge to asylum seekers arriving in southern Europe, often having fled war in Syria and Iraq, the EU’s top court has ruled.
The three central European countries now face possible fines for refusing to take a share of refugees, after EU leaders forced through mandatory quotas to relocate up to 160,000 asylum seekers at the height of the 2015 migration crisis.
Continue reading...Hungary’s prime minister criticised for inefficient and unworkable measures
Hungary’s nationalist government announced measures to strip the country’s mayors of political autonomy, before appearing to ditch them hours later, the latest episode in a political drama in which the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has been accused of using the coronavirus to mount a power grab.
On Monday, Hungary’s parliament passed a law that gives Orbán the right to rule by decree for an indefinite period and also criminalises intentionally spreading false information about coronavirus with up to five years in prison. The move was roundly criticised by Orbán’s domestic and international critics.
Continue reading...Viktor Orbán is using the pandemic to seize more power. This backsliding could permanently change the face of the EU
To say that Europe is united by its divisions is an exaggeration – but only a small one. Closing national borders during the pandemic may have been a rational health response, but the longer term political consequences become more troubling when we look at the order in which European governments began to reimpose frontiers.
Italy made the decision on 10 March, when the number of confirmed cases had already exceeded 10,000. Over the next five days, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary closed their borders one after the other, even though by that time in any of them the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases had not reach a hundred.
Continue reading...Violence and humiliation used to police coronavirus curfews around globe, often affecting the poorest and more vulnerable
As coronavirus lockdowns have been expanded globally, billions of people have found that they are now faced with unprecedented restrictions. Police across the world have been given licence to control behaviour in a way that would normally be extreme even for an authoritarian state.
Related: ‘We can’t go back to normal’: how will coronavirus change the world?
Continue reading...Hungary’s PM insists extreme measures are only to fight the pandemic, others are not so sure
The coronavirus has already overwhelmed medical services, grounded flights and halted economic growth, but one of its most enduring effects could be to usher in a political age in which soft authoritarians have turned harder, and the surveillance state becomes a way of life even in some democracies.
In Hungary, after a set of measures introduced on Monday, it is now a criminal offence to spread misinformation about coronavirus, and the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, can rule by decree for an indefinite period. In neighbouring Serbia, soldiers patrol the streets as part of the coronavirus response plan. In Moscow, authorities are reportedly mulling measures that would require everyone who wants to go outside to submit the reasons online, and then be tracked via their smartphones.
Continue reading...Measures voted on Monday will allow Viktor Orbán to rule by decree without time limits
Hungary’s emergency law that enables the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, to rule by decree without time limits is incompatible with being in the EU, the European parliament’s liberal group said on Tuesday.
Passing measures ostensibly to tackle coronavirus, the Hungarian parliament on Monday voted to give Orbán the power to rule by decree with no clear end-date. The law also introduces jail terms for spreading disinformation about the virus, raising fears it could be used to neuter critics of the government’s approach.
Continue reading...Fears over lack of checks and balances in new law, which includes jail terms for spreading misinformation
Hungary is set to pass a new law on coronavirus that includes jail terms for spreading misinformation as critics warn that the nationalist prime minister Viktor Orbán could be given carte blanche to rule by decree, with no clear time limit.
Hungary’s parliament, in which Orbán’s Fidesz party has a two-thirds majority, looks set to pass the bill on Monday in spite of opposition from other political parties, who had demanded a time limit or sunset clause on the legislation.
Continue reading...Europe now centre of pandemic, says WHO, as Spain prepares for state of emergency
The World Health Organization has stepped up its calls for intensified action to fight the coronavirus pandemic, imploring countries “not to let this fire burn”, as Spain said it would declare a 15-day state of emergency from Saturday.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, said Europe – where the virus is present in all 27 EU states and has infected 25,000 people – had become the centre of the epidemic, with more reported cases and deaths than the rest of the world combined apart from China.
Continue reading...From Hungary to the UK, mainstream conservatives have capitulated to the authoritarianism of the far right
If there is one thing on which Brussels insiders and Eurosceptics can agree, it’s that the EU has experienced a decade of crises. The eurozone crisis and the subsequent enforcement of fiscal austerity exposed the coercive underside of Brussels. The arrival of refugees in 2015 tested the limits of European liberalism. Brexit, the first time a member state has handed back its EU membership, wounded the self-image of the EU as an ever-expanding bloc. But as serious as these challenges are, none of them threatens to shake European integration like the entrenchment of the far right in two member-state governments.
Europe’s real tumult lies in the failure of its centre-right parties to avert the rise of the far right. In Hungary, the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who is about to celebrate his 10th year in office, has developed a rule book for how to stealthily undermine democratic institutions and the rule of law while still appearing to follow legal procedures. For the last decade, his Fidesz party has had a large enough majority in parliament to change the constitution according to its autocratic whims. It has transformed the electoral system such that a real turnover in power is now virtually impossible. Last year, the widely respected democracy watchdog Freedom House downgraded Hungary’s status to a “partly free” country – the first time this has happened from within the EU.
Continue reading...Hungarian political party says it is no longer far right, but its shift should not be exaggerated
Hungary’s Jobbik was one of the farthest right parties in Europe. One of its MPs suggested drawing up a list of Hungary’s Jews, others had a history of racial hate speech, and the party was affiliated with the Hungarian Guard, a uniformed movement that on occasion terrorised Hungary’s Roma communities.
Recently, though, the party has a new message to voters: we’re not far right any more.
Continue reading...Philanthropist unveils plan for global network of institutions at Davos and attacks Trump as ‘ultimate narcissist’
The philanthropist and former financier George Soros has announced that he is to donate $1bn to fund a new global network of universities designed to promote liberal values and his vision of an open society.
In what he hailed as the “most important and enduring project of my life”, Soros said it was important to fund institutions that would help resist the drift towards growing authoritarianism in the US, Russia and China. He also launched a fresh attack on Donald Trump, calling the US president “the ultimate narcissist”.
Continue reading...Promises of a better life in many social media posts are often a trap for marginalised communities such as the Roma
In the village of Bag, north-east of Budapest, the houses along the main street are smart and well-kept. Tucked behind, up a slight hill, where the buildings become bare brick and the tarmac road turns into a dust track, people sit on the ground in the afternoon sun, talking and playing cards.
These are the Roma, or the Roma who remain in Hungary, where they live on society’s edge, clinging on in the outskirts of towns and villages, shunned and stigmatised as potential criminals.
Continue reading...Mayors of Prague, Warsaw, Bratislava and Budapest agree to protect common values
The mayors of four central European capitals signed a so-called “Pact of Free Cities” in Budapest on Monday, vowing to stand together against populist national governments in the region.
Budapest’s mayor Gergely Karácsony was joined by his counterparts from Warsaw, Prague and Bratislava to sign the document, which promised to promote the “common values of freedom, human dignity, democracy, equality, rule of law, social justice, tolerance and cultural diversity”.
Continue reading...No reason given for withdrawal from show, called ‘homosexual flotilla’ by pro-Orbán journalist
Hungary will not participate in next year’s Eurovision song contest, amid speculation the decision was taken because the competition is “too gay” for the taste of the country’s far-right government and public media bosses.
While no official reason has been given for the withdrawal, the move comes amid an increase in homophobic rhetoric in Hungary, where the anti-migration prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has launched a “family first” policy aimed at helping traditional families and boosting birth rates.
Continue reading...Pew research reveals very different views on whether countries are better off today
Thirty years on, few people in Europe’s former eastern bloc regret the monumental political, social and economic change unleashed by the fall of communism – but at the same time few are satisfied with the way things are now, and many worry for the future.
A Pew Research Center survey of 17 countries, including 14 EU member states, found that while most people in central and eastern Europe generally embraced democracy and the market economy, support was far from uniformly strong.
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