Under Orban, Hungary has long enacted crackdowns on NGOs and the country’s independent media.
Hungary leads an overview of NGOs and media operating in countries that receive funding from the US and other international sources.
Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban’s allies of President Donald Trump said his government is moving “a line by line” through organizations with financial support from the US.
Under Orban, Hungary has enacted a long-standing crackdown on NGOs and the country’s independent media, passed critics’ advocate laws, protecting women and minorities, providing legal and human rights support, and formal They are trying to condemn and sabotage groups exposing corruption.
“It’s the moment when we have to defeat these international networks and they have to be wiped out,” Orban said. “We need to make their existence legally impossible.”
Trump’s decision to dismantle the United States International Development Organization (USAID), an agency accused of providing humanitarian assistance overseas, has only encouraged the Hungarian president. He praised Trump’s fundraising novelty and argued that such aid had funded organizations seeking to “fall” his government.
Orban said people who work in organizations that receive USAID funds can be considered “agents.”
“All money coming from America should be made public, and those who receive it should be enacted against them,” Orban said.
In 2023, Orban’s right-wing government launched the Sovereign Protection Bureau, the authority to take charge of investigating organizations and media that appear to be exerting foreign influence.
Under Orban, Hungary has been charged with a number of serious local and foreign democratic inverse investigations, with the EU having the country withholding billions of funds.
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