As a Hungarian living in Berlin, I’d watched the protests against Viktor Orbán from afar – until, like almost everyone I know, I went home for Christmas. Recent months have been very special for many people in my native country. Thousands have been demonstrating against the government, the ruling party Fidesz and its leader. Among the cheerful crowds in Budapest, I felt the significance of these events for myself too.
This was the first demonstration I’d attended since leaving Hungary in 2012. I quit my job at the Hungarian public TV broadcaster because I’d been offered a German academic fellowship. And I’d applied for that because of the introduction of a law restricting media freedom a year earlier. The public broadcaster was one of the first targets of a government intent on controlling the news agenda. I felt I was just too young to stay and put up with it. Since then, Orbán’s party has won three elections in a row – not necessarily because Fidesz secured the most support across the country but rather because the opposition was unable to unite and offer a real alternative.
Many Hungarians are still waiting for some kind of “saviour” from the outside – pressures on Orbán from other European politicians or the EU institutions. But no one has come to save us. Not even Angela Merkel, formerly one of the main opponents of Orbán’s refugee policy in the EU. I can’t forget their last press conference together in Berlin in June 2018 – how they fought in front of the cameras to have the last word on what solidarity means for Europe. For Orbán, it’s about building fences. For Merkel, it’s granting asylum. Still, in the past decade or so, we’d never witnessed a dispute like this between them, a public dispute. Merkel has avoided meeting the Hungarian prime minister. For four years, she did not invite him to Berlin. She decided to turn her gaze away, and in effect tolerate Hungary’s democratic backsliding.
Although they may differ, the leading parties of both Hungary and Germany (my two homelands now) sit in the same parliamentary group in the European parliament. The German Christian Democrats (CDU) need Fidesz’s support on many different levels, in Brussels and in Germany. There are notable sympathies between Fidesz and the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). Ahead of Germany’s 2017 federal elections, the CDU wanted to steer clear of any internal debate over the friendly ties between Orbán and the CSU’s then leader, Horst Seehofer, Germany’s current minister of the interior. Today the CDU-CSU alliance is still fragile: it may not withstand stronger criticism of Orbán and his policies.
But economic factors arguably play an even greater role. Germany’s large carmakers count on political stability and a favourable bilateral relationship to run a profitable business in Hungary. They’re investing more and more there. Following the example of Daimler and Audi, BMW recently announced a €1bn investment to build a new plant in Hungary – its first factory like this in Europe since 2005 – all this against a backdrop of increasing trade tensions between China and the US.
The biggest question is, who will work in these huge factories? Hungary, along with many other central European countries, is struggling with a serious shortage of workers because of mass emigration. But Orbán’s government came up with a “solution”: it passed a new law that allows employers to ask staff to work up to 400 hours a year in overtime. People quickly dubbed it the “slave law”, and this is what sparked the large protests that began before Christmas in Hungary.
In Berlin, Hungarian expats have held rallies in solidarity with the Hungarian protesters. It is no coincidence that the most recent one took place in front of the Mercedes-Benz arena in the German capital. I went there to report on it for the online edition of one of Hungary’s last independent weeklies. Even Germans attended the symbolic gathering. They’d put this slogan on their placards: “Weber, where is your red line?” It referred to Manfred Weber, the German leader of the European People’s party (EPP) group in the European parliament. Last summer, some members had called for Fidesz to be expelled from the EPP if Orbán crossed “certain lines”. In September the European parliament triggered the article 7 procedure against Hungary for democratic governance and human rights violations – raising the possibility of sanctions. But Fidesz remained in the EPP group. No matter Hungary’s repressive media law, its expulsion of the Central European University, its “Stop Soros” campaign, its curtailing of NGOs, and the “slave law”: as long as Orbán can provide extra seats for the EPP, and as long as he makes sure German carmakers are given attractive deals, the “red lines” will be pretty flexible.
Last week the European parliament debated Hungary’s situation again, mainly because of the recent protests and the overtime law. Hungarian government officials snubbed the session. Not only did Orbán not show up, but a vast majority of MEPs from the EPP group and even its leader, Weber, decided not to attend. A Fidesz MEP, Tamás Deutsch, repeated the usual official phrases about an “immigration-friendly leftwing liberal majority” in the EU parliament taking it out on the Hungary government. “You want to threaten, blackmail and punish countries that reject migration,” he said.
Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, called the debate a stunt ahead of the EU elections in May. Well, he was right: nothing concrete ensued. It’s clear by now that all the players know which business and political interests Orbán can call on to shield himself from any serious criticism. As a result, he can continue to cast himself unhindered as a beacon for national populists across the continent ahead of the EU elections in a few months, promoting his self-proclaimed “illiberal democracy”. People have been out on the streets for weeks in freezing temperatures in the hope he’d suffer some consequences. There have been none so far.
Dóra Diseri is a Hungarian journalist based in Berlin, working for N-OST, a reporting network on eastern Europe.