Hungary Leans Authoritarian as Largest Opposition Newspaper Closes

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Nepszabadsag, Hungary’s largest left-wing opposition newspaper, issued an announcement on October 8 on its website that it would suspend its operations immediately. The announcement cites rising costs and reduced circulation as the culprit, stating that “Népszabadság has lost 74 percent of its sold circulation in the past 10 years, corresponding to more than 100,000 copies. Consequently, since 2007, it has produced more than 5 billion Hungarian forints (HUF) in losses.”

However, few accept this official explanation. Politico Europe reports that newspaper staff were informed of the newspaper’s closing at the same time that the public learned about it. Many are instead pointing to government intervention as the reason for the newspaper’s closing.

According to the New York Times, in its last week of circulation, Nepszabadsag published several critical articles about Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government, including reports that Orban’s chief of staff spent government money to fly to a wedding in a helicopter and that the governor of the central bank was living in an apartment owned by the head of the Hungarian Banking Association.

However, Orban and his government have denied any involvement in the suspension of Nepszabadsag, with his party issuing a statement stating that the newspaper’s move to close was a “rational economic decision, not a political one.”

Despite this, over 2,000 Hungarians took to the street to protest the newspaper’s closure. Even spokespeople from Jobbik, Hungary’s far-right party, dismissed the official explanation, stating that “the total undermining of Népszabadság is the latest example of Viktor’s Orbán’s megalomania.”

Orban is no stranger to media repression. In 2010, soon after being elected president, he pushed a strict media law through parliament allowing the government to issue fines and suspend licenses over very broad definitions of publishing “banned content.”

Hungary seems to be leaning further and further toward an authoritarian regime, perhaps as a result of Orban’s promise to build an “illiberal democracy,” arguing that “liberal democratic states can’t remain globally competitive.” Yet this path looks like it will cause tension between Hungary and the European Union, which already criticized Orban’s 2010 media law.

Hopefully, Hungary’s slide towards authoritarianism is merely a result of Orban’s repressive policies, and not representative of a larger movement across Eastern Europe.