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Assessing Hungary’s foreign funding bill

On May 13, the Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán presented a draft of a new foreign funding bill which represents the most serious attack on Hungarian media in years and is the latest step in a more than decade-long campaign by the government to stigmatise independent journalism, undermine its business model and systematically erode media pluralism.

If passed, this legislation would effectively represent the first foreign agent-style law in the European Union, marking another milestone in Hungary’s democratic decline and deepening the crackdown in what has long been the EU’s worst country for media freedom.

Hungary has already developed the most advanced model of media capture in the EU, using a wide range of tools to capture public media and regulatory bodies, punish government critics, and silence independent voices. The Sovereignty Protection Office, established in late 2023, has conducted smear campaigns against leading independent investigative outlets.

Now, with the newly proposed law, which includes heavy sanctions and poses a severe threat to the viability of independent media, how can Hungary’s free press survive? In this one hour session, we analysed the bill’s implications for media funding, its role in accelerating democratic backsliding, the economic challenges it poses, and what journalistic solidarity means in the climate of fear and uncertainty.