(This article was written by Derk Jan Eppink and appeared in Wynia’s Week. Den Haag mag wel wat minder zelfgenoegzaam zijn over het Hongarije van Victor Orban, zoveel fraaier is onze netwerkcorruptie niet)
For years the Dutch House of Representatives held intense debates about Viktor Orban’s Hungary, for many the contemporary “Count Dracula on the Danube.” His name was treated as a curse, as it was by PRO member of parliament Kati Piri, whose father fled Hungary in 1956. For Piri it was “personal,” even though Orban had earned his stripes as a dissident in the Eastern Bloc. Yet in The Hague “Orban” was the bogeyman. That had more to do with The Hague’s need for an exorcism than with Orban himself. Now he is gone, has acknowledged his defeat, congratulated his opponent Péter Magyar, and left. A real Dracula would have lashed out ferociously.
On 19 May 2021, in her maiden speech in the House of Representatives, Piri spoke about her father and his departure from Hungary during the uprising against the invasion by Warsaw Pact countries in 1956. He saw no future there anymore but occasionally returned as a tourist, from the Netherlands. He would then say: “we are back in that dark country.”
Tired of Orban, but Not of His Policies
Orban grew up in Hungary as a young dissident and in 1989 demanded the withdrawal of the Soviet troops still stationed there. As prime minister he worked toward Hungary’s accession to NATO and the EU. In 2022 there was great excitement in the House because forecasts predicted that Orban would lose the parliamentary elections. Members of parliament such as Piri, Sjoerdsma (D66) and Van der Lee (GroenLinks) looked forward to the fall of the “potentate.” But Orban won, and disappointment remained.
Do these parties now have reason to celebrate? Not really, except that Orban is leaving, and after 16 years as prime minister it was about time. Hungarians had grown tired of the bombastic Orban, but not of his policies. In the new Hungarian parliament, TISZA, the party of Péter Magyar, took 53.3% of the vote and gathered 138 of the 199 parliamentary seats. A convincing victory. Orban’s Fidesz was stuck at 38.1% with 55 seats, while a small nationalist party won 6 seats with 5.8%.
In the new Hungarian parliament sit: the centre-right, the right, and the far right. Not a single left-wing party cleared the 5% electoral threshold; social liberals of the VVD/D66 type, socialists and greens (PRO) also fell by the wayside. And yet, last June, there were members of the Dutch parliament from VVD, PvdA/GL, D66 and the mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, to demonstrate in Budapest against the ban on the Pride march, which incidentally took place undisturbed. In short: Dutch politicians demonstrated in Budapest to burnish their own political profile. Their kindred spirits in Hungary were not elected. The name Orban served in the Netherlands as imported glory of resistance.
Cronyism
Criticism of Orban is largely justified. Magyar split off from Fidesz after his wife, Judit Varga, resigned from the Orban government as Minister of Justice. The Hungarian president had granted clemency to a man who turned out to have been involved in child abuse. Varga had co-signed the clemency request. For Magyar that was reason to leave Fidesz and found his own party. The affair caused the Orban government enormous damage.
A carousel of scandals arises when parties and individuals stay in power too long. That certainly applied to Orban. As a dissident he fought for a democracy that under him gradually slid into cronyism: a rule of friends who pass the ball to one another. The bigger the cronyism, the more room for the corruption that ultimately permeates society and blocks the economy. Whoever needs an appointment at the doctor’s must first lay a wad of Hungarian banknotes on the table. That affects the ordinary citizen across the entire country and also explains the scale of Orban’s defeat. As soon as visiting the doctor becomes difficult, the voter’s patience runs out fast. A loud show of support from American vice president J.D. Vance, meant to give Orban a hand, achieves nothing. A grandly announced offer of billions in investment from the U.S. is met with disbelief. The voter wants “bread and butter.”
The Hague’s Cronyism
That cronyism did Orban in. But does the Netherlands have its own “Hague cronyism”? A scarcely transparent system of (political) appointments and subsidy flows in which, of all people, a “progressive administrative elite” hands out jobs and subsidies. Mayors, directors of government agencies, senior civil service posts, NGOs. “Networking” is the key word. “Network corruption” the consequence. The result: the state grows, the economy stagnates.
Long-ruling parties lie at the root of it, as the CDA once did. Orban ruled for 16 years; the VVD now does too. D66 and PRO are taking over the banner. Top positions for male friends, and above all for female ones. That this cronyism breeds intellectual inbreeding and diploma hyperinflation can be seen in the sitting cabinet. The citizen is the one who pays the price and ultimately takes revenge at the ballot box. Precisely what happened to Orban.
Terror Háza
In Brussels the flags came out when the Hungarian voter sent Orban home. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, congratulated Magyar at once. She compared the electoral victory to the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. That comparison is typical of an ignorant Commission president who, as a German, ought to be ashamed.
I was recently in Budapest to soak up a bit of the atmosphere and visited the Terror Háza (House of Terror) where the Hungarian secret police made short work of dissidents in 1956. Show trials followed. Those sentenced to death were locked up in small cells in the gruesome building at Andrássy 60, among them Prime Minister Imre Nagy, who advocated a “separate road to socialism.” Von der Leyen thought she would shine, but struck false notes. The crushing of the Uprising was worse than Orban.
Anyone who thinks the Magyar government will dance to Von der Leyen’s tune is mistaken. On 22 January of this year, the “Patriots for Europe” group tabled a motion of no confidence against Von der Leyen. Magyar is currently a member of the European Parliament with 6 fellow TISZA members in the EPP group of Christian Democrats. They effectively backed the motion against Von der Leyen by absenting themselves from the vote, and were punished by the group leadership: a six-month “speaking ban.” That punishment also struck the two-member BBB delegation, which switched to the European Conservatives (ECR). British Conservatives once characterized the EPP as: “a prison run by Germans.”
Von der Leyen expects Magyar to obey. But he has a different agenda. Magyar announced that Hungary will continue importing Russian oil, that it will not take part in EU loans for Ukraine, that it opposes a swift EU accession by Ukraine, and he likewise advocates lifting sanctions against Russia. Moreover, Ukraine must treat its Hungarian minority better. Magyar turns against the EU migration pact; above all, no Islamic asylum seekers. Spot the differences with Orban.
A History Refresher for Von der Leyen
That is not what Brussels wants, nor what the Dutch minority cabinet wants. During the Orban period the EU froze 17 billion euros in EU funds over “the rule of law.” And 10 billion in the Corona Recovery Fund. Von der Leyen uses those sums to force Hungary into an about-face: money in exchange for concessions. In short: a Brussels Diktat! Magyar has room to manoeuvre on the Ukraine support package, but if he caves on asylum, he signs his own political death warrant. Even the Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, the former “President of Europe,” did not dare to do that.
Perhaps Von der Leyen will visit Budapest, with the House of Terror and what remains of the Jewish quarter on the agenda, for her much-needed history refresher. The haughty and slogan-laden style of Von der Leyen already comes across as irritating in the Netherlands, but it runs directly counter to the mentality in Eastern Europe, where people are beginning to perceive Brussels as a new version of the former Moscow.
Derk Jan Eppink is a Distinguished Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.
