• The “state of danger,” a special legal order allowing the government to rule by decree, has remained in force since 2020, with one brief interruption. The government first approved the “state of danger” in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since May 2022, the government has used the Ukraine war to justify its continuation. In 2022, the parliament passed a law stating that until June 2023, government decrees passed during a “state of danger” could remain valid beyond the 15 days stipulated by the constitution.1 In May, however, the governing majority passed an amendment extending the state of danger until November,2 which was then further prolonged until May 2024.3
• The government continued to pursue an anti-LGBT+ agenda throughout the year, with the enthusiastic support of the far-right Our Homeland Movement. In April, the parliament adopted an amendment that would have allowed citizens to report people who challenge “the constitutionally recognized role of marriage and family” and “children’s right to self-identification appropriate to their sex at birth” to the government. 4 According to human rights lawyers, the vague wording of the law undermined its enforceability.5 In a rare step, President Katalin Novák vetoed the law due to its ambiguity, unclear practical applicability, and its failure to clearly stipulate the legal consequences for those found to violate the law.6 The parliament did not override her veto or amend the law by the end of 2023, a rare legislative defeat for Prime Minister Orbán. In July and August, the Consumer Protection Authority fined two publishers, Líra and Libri, for failing to cover children’s books featuring LGBT+ characters in “closed wrapping,” as required by the Child Protection Act passed in 2021.7 Consequently, bookstores began to display books with LGBT+ characters in more discreet locations and wrap books with LGBT+ characters in transparent foil to prevent customers from opening them.8 In October, at the urging of Our Homeland, the government banned anyone younger than 18 from visiting the World Press Photo exhibition in Budapest’s National Museum, due to the inclusion of LGBT+ material at the exhibition.9 The museum, however, could not enforce the ban because it had no authority to verify visitors’ ages upon entry.10 Subsequently, the director of the National Museum, himself a Fidesz politician, was fired by Minister of Culture and Education János Csák.11
• The government launched its 12th national consultation in November, in which it solicited Hungarian citizens’ views on 11 statements concerning the EU’s alleged agenda on a range of issues, including support for Ukraine and Brussels’ purported economic and political interference in Hungarian domestic politics.12 The questionnaire featured leading questions and preformulated potential responses that contained false allegations against EU institutions.13 The national consultation was accompanied by a nationwide billboard campaign with posters displaying EC President Ursula von der Leyen and Alex Soros, chairman of the Open Society Foundations, which contained the message, “Let’s not dance to the tune of their whistle.”14 Although questionnaires were mailed to Hungarian citizens, the national consultation could also be completed online, where the lack of proper authentication allowed for individuals to submit the questionnaire multiple times and manipulate the results. The lack of transparency around the consultation undermined its legitimacy. The consultation served as a prelude to the governing coalition’s European Parliament campaign.
• Capitalizing on the 2022 revelation that a US-registered NGO, Action for Democracy (A4D), had made donations to the Everybody’s Hungary Movement of opposition prime minister candidate Péter Márki-Zay, the government fueled the narrative that foreign actors were interfering in Hungarian politics and threatening the country’s sovereignty. In December, the parliament adopted the Sovereignty Protection Act, which could be used to further intimidate and silence organizations that receive foreign funding (see Civil Society section). Signaling that the governing coalition would make “national sovereignty” a centerpiece of its agenda, the government added a question on this issue to the national consultation, despite the fact that the Sovereignty Protection Act had already been adopted.15 At the same time, the parliament passed a constitutional amendment that allowed the government to form the Sovereignty Protection Authority that the Sovereignty Protection Act mandated.16 17
• Additionally, the amendment declared that the protection of the homeland is a “national matter” and authorized the defense minister to reorganize and restructure the armed forces by decree.18 The amendment also forbade members of the armed forces to establish or operate trade unions.19

• In May, the governing majority amended the electoral code.20 Before the amendment’s passage, in municipalities where representatives are elected via a mixed system of single-mandate districts and “compensation lists,” parties or alliances could register a list if they fielded candidates in at least half of the municipality’s districts. The amendment raised this threshold to two thirds of the districts.21 Critics argued that the amendment was meant to disadvantage opposition parties while favoring the governing coalition.22 To overcome this disadvantage and improve their chances in local elections against Fidesz candidates, opposition parties need to cooperate to avoid fragmentation of the opposition vote, which involves fielding joint candidates to challenge the Fidesz nominee. The 50 percent threshold could have allowed more room for opposition parties to negotiate the distribution of candidates across districts and determine who runs where. It would have also allowed the opposition more flexibility to form alliances within a municipality, and potentially would have enabled opposition parties to register two lists without running against each other in any single-mandate districts. The new two-thirds threshold limits the strategic options available to the opposition. If opposition parties do not want to compete against each other, they can only register one list in a municipality, an arrangement that may be difficult to negotiate.
• The same amendment canceled early municipal elections ahead of the 2024 local elections, except where campaigning had already begun before the amendment’s adoption.23 As a result, 10 scheduled elections were canceled in 2023. In these municipalities, the empty seats will be filled from the compensation lists registered in 2019, which raises constitutional concerns because some of those seats had previously been directly elected.24
• Additionally, the amendment banned early parliamentary elections in a year when national parliamentary elections are scheduled.25 If a member of parliament elected in a single-mandate district dies or resigns in the calendar year of national elections, their party can nominate their successor in lieu of an early election. As a result, the relative strength of parliamentary factions cannot change in the months leading up to national elections.
• In December, the Our Homeland Movement led a successful effort in the parliament to amend the election rules of the General Assembly of Budapest.26 According to the amendment, the 33-member assembly, which was previously elected through a mix of direct elections and party lists, will be elected solely through party lists from 2024 on. 27 The new rules would challenge the position of the opposition, which has held the majority in the assembly since 2019. Polling suggests that if seats are distributed proportionally, opposition parties could fall short. The initiative passed with the unanimous support of the governing parties that benefited the most from the new rules.28
• Local elections and European Parliament elections will be held together in June 2024. However, the mandates of the incumbent representatives will not end until November 2024, since they took office with a five-year mandate in November 2019. Consequently, newly elected representatives will have to wait nearly six months to take office, while incumbents who lost reelection will remain in power during that period.
• In December, the governing Fidesz-KDNP majority adopted the Sovereignty Protection Act, which it said was needed to counter foreign interference in Hungary’s domestic affairs (see Civil Society section). The law criminalized “prohibited influencing of the voters’ will,” which could punish electoral candidates who accept foreign funding with up to three years in prison.29

• After the government failed to respond to protesters’ demands in 2022, student protests for teachers’ rights and better working conditions continued in 2023.30 In July, the governing majority adopted the Status Law, which no longer classified teachers as public servants, stripping them of key employment protections and curtailing their rights to strike and speak freely.31 Civil society activists accused the government of passing the new law to punish the strikers and dubbed it the “Revenge Law.” The ministry claimed that it consulted teachers’ unions on the draft law, which the unions denied.32 Union leaders argued that the new law failed to address the strike demands and further curbed their autonomy.33 These changes align with the government’s effort to centralize public education and ultimately concentrate power and oversight in the hands of the executive. Teachers were required to accept their new status in September or face termination. More than 5,000 teachers declared that they would reject their new status and resign.34
• To protest the law and advocate for a public dialogue on education policy, the civic organizations aHang and the United Student Front announced in November that they sought to collect one million blank national consultation questionnaires (see “National Democratic Governance”).35 By the end of their campaign, they had gathered nearly 400,000 blank questionnaires.36
• Watchdogs and NGOs critical of the government continued to face pressure and attacks from the government and progovernment media. Legislation meant to intimidate and stigmatize NGOs remained in force, including the 2021 LexNGO law that subjects organizations that seek to influence public life to audits.37 Although the European Court of Justice ruled in 2021 that the 2018 Stop Soros package, which subjected individuals who help asylum seekers to potential imprisonment, violated EU law,38 the government did not fully repeal it.
• Arguing that foreign organizations and individuals were influencing domestic affairs and violating Hungary’s sovereignty, the governing coalition adopted the Sovereignty Protection Act in December.39 The act established the Sovereignty Protection Authority (SPA), an autonomous state body designed to safeguard the country’s sovereignty, as of February 1, 2024. The authority’s president is proposed by the prime minister and appointed by the president for a six-year term. The SPA evaluates risks to Hungarian sovereignty based on its own methodology, mapping and investigating activities it suspects are conducted in the interest of a foreign entity. These may include activities conducted on behalf of other governments or foreign actors that seek to influence Hungarian politics, as well as the activities of organizations that receive foreign funding and attempt to influence Hungarian elections. The SPA can access data from any state or local government body, as well as organizations and individuals connected to its investigations. It can also refer those it suspects of violating Hungarian sovereignty for prosecution. There is no forum to appeal the findings in the SPA’s annual report or its activities. Since key concepts are not defined in the law, the SPA can determine what activities fall under its jurisdiction and operate under its own definition of sovereignty, which gives it virtually unlimited and unchecked powers. NGOs and independent media outlets protested the new law, arguing that it seeks to intimidate and silence critical voices who would be the likely targets of the new authority.40 Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović called for the law’s repeal, arguing that it is too broad and threatens human rights.41 In December, Tamás Lánczi, former deputy state secretary and former director of Századvég, a Fidesz-aligned think tank, was named as the prime minister’s nominee for SPA president.42
• In November, LinkedIn confirmed that LinkedIn profiles used to deceive the targets of a smear campaign in 2022 were operated by the private Israeli intelligence firm Black Cube.43 The smear campaign aimed to discredit journalists and civil society leaders who criticized the government ahead of the 2022 parliamentary elections. Although it remains unknown who commissioned the operation, Black Cube has previously participated in efforts to discredit Hungarian civil society actors critical of the government.44

• The government has systematically dismantled media independence, freedom, and pluralism since 2010. Progovernment outlets operating under the umbrella of the Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA) continue to dominate the media landscape.45 Public media fails to fulfill its public service function and instead serves the political interests of the Fidesz-KDNP government. These outlets have not faced any sanctions from the Hungarian Media and Communication Authority or the Media Council, which are both loyal to the government. Public media, alongside progovernment outlets, have become tools to spread disinformation and manipulate public opinion, a phenomenon that continued throughout 2023.46 Independent media faces continued financial difficulties. Due to the lack of advertising revenues, independent outlets increasingly turn to their audiences to sustain their operations. Independent outlets have experimented with crowdfunding, microdonations, and various membership and subscription models.47
• Zoltán Varga, the owner of Central Media, the largest Hungarian nongovernmental media group, was investigated by the National Tax and Customs Office in 2023 for alleged fraud.48 Varga claimed that government-aligned businesses had been pressuring him to sell his company, and that the investigation was an attempt to put additional political pressure on him.49 Varga was among the government critics and journalists who had been surveilled by Pegasus spyware.50
• Between April and August, more than 40 media websites, including independent outlets critical of the government such as HVG, Magyar Hang, Népszava, Telex, and 444, faced distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.51 According to a report from the International Press Institute, the attacks may have been coordinated domestically, given that messages in Hungarian were left behind in the code from the attacks. As of late August, no progovernment media outlet had been targeted in the wave of attacks.52
• In May, the parliament passed an amendment to the criminal code that partially decriminalized defamation when discussing public affairs, if the speech does not include attacks on the victim’s human dignity.53 Journalists welcomed the change,54 but legal experts raised concerns that the law may shield progovernment outlets that smear critics from serious legal consequences.55
• In 2023, the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), a foundation close to Fidesz, acquired the majority stake (more than 98 percent) in the Libri Group, a major publisher.56 The acquisition gives the MCC, which plays a key role in broadening Fidesz’s intellectual, cultural, and educational reach, control over Hungary’s largest bookstore chain (which is owned by Libri).57
• Independent media outlets spoke out against Sovereignty Protection Act passed in December (see Civil Society section). They argued that while the law does not explicitly regulate the operations of media companies, it may be used to restrict freedom of the press.58 Independent media outlets could be labeled as “foreign agents” if they accept funding from abroad, and could be targeted by smear campaigns with no room for appeal. The law could also be used to circumvent regulations protecting the sources of journalists.59 Fidesz politicians and government officials have made contradictory statements on whether the scope of the law includes the media.60

• Local governments continued to face financial challenges in 2023 due to deficits stemming from the government’s Covid-19 policies, increasing utility prices, and rising inflation. The president of the National Association of Local Governments estimated that 600 billion forints ($1.8 billion) were missing from local governments’ budgets at the beginning of 2023.61 In early January, the government announced that it would disburse a total of 44 billion forints ($129 million) to municipalities with over 10,000 inhabitants.62 The funds were disbursed from the 144 billion forints ($421 million) the central government budgeted for 2023 to pay for municipalities’ utility costs. The remaining 100 billion forints ($292 million) was allocated to municipalities with less than 10,000 inhabitants. The decision about the allocations followed negotiations with a central government representative. While the government said the funds were allocated based on objective financial criteria, some opposition politicians complained that the political orientations of the municipalities’ leaders played a role.63 Disproportionate support for some Fidesz-led municipalities suggests that political affiliation may have influenced the final decisions.64
• Municipalities depend on the central government for (limited) financial support, but they also need its approval should they seek to improve their liquidity through bank loans. In practice, this makes local governments more dependent on the executive’s whims. For example, in 2023, the central government rejected a 16.6 billion forint ($49 million) bank loan requested by opposition-led Budapest, despite the fact that the bank had examined the request and would have approved it.65 There were other financial disputes between the central government and the city in 2023. Budapest’s mayor criticized the central government for high taxes and withholding financial support during the year. 66
• The government passed an amendment in December that weakened the position of indebted municipalities that cannot repay their loans. The amendment placed insolvent municipalities under the supervision of a budget commissioner with the power to sell municipal assets to settle their debts within two months.67 By passing the amendment, the national government ended its obligation to cover municipal debt in the future, putting creditors’ interests ahead of local governments’.68
• After the government announced in 2022 that the Chinese battery manufacturer CATL would build Europe’s largest battery factory near the Fidesz-led town of Debrecen, locals (who were not consulted beforehand about the project, in keeping with the increased centralization in governance) spoke out against the investment in 2023.69 Opponents argued that the factory would damage the local environment because battery production is highly water intensive.70 The Politics Can Be Different (LMP) party announced in January that it would initiate a national referendum against the construction of battery plants over a certain size without local citizens’ consent.71 However, the National Election Commission rejected the party’s submitted questions in September.72 Additionally, the Momentum Movement party pursued a local referendum on the Debrecen factory,73 which the election commission in Debrecen also rejected in February.74 As of the end of 2023, plans to construct the factory remained in place, despite popular objections.

• The government pursued a series of reforms meant to strengthen judicial independence in 2023, in compliance with the “horizontal enabling condition” in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. A 2022 EC assessment found that Hungary had not fulfilled the condition and raised other concerns about the rule of law. Based on the assessment, the EC suspended disbursements of structural funds allocated for Hungary, as well as payments under the country’s post-Covid Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP).75 To receive (a portion of) the suspended structural funds, the Hungarian government was required to meet four “super milestones” on judicial independence. These four milestones were incorporated into a larger list of 27 super milestones, including anticorruption measures that the government was required to implement in order to gain access to its RRP funds. The four super milestones required the government to increase the powers of the independent National Judicial Council (NJC) to limit undue influence and ensure more transparency in the courts; to reform the highest court, the Curia, to limit political influence; to end the Constitutional Court’s role in reviewing lower courts’ final decisions upon the request of public authorities; and to bar the Curia from reviewing questions that judges intend to refer to the European Court of Justice (ECJ).76
• Watchdogs criticized the reforms and the process leading to their adoption. Although the government consulted with CSOs and judicial experts77 on the initial proposals published in January,78 the reform package that the parliament approved in May significantly differed from earlier plans and contained many provisions that were not discussed with relevant stakeholders.79 According to NGOs, the only milestone the May amendment met was preventing public authorities from challenging lower courts’ decisions before the Constitutional Court.80 The legislation only partly addressed the other three milestones.81 To meet the other three milestones before the EC’s decision on the release of funds, the parliament hastily passed another set of amendments in December without consulting CSOs or judicial experts.82 Watchdogs argued that the last-minute amendments still failed to meet the other three milestones: the Curia could still block judges from referring matters to the ECJ, the case allocation process remained opaque and unobjective (leaving room for manipulation), and the Curia’s president can still be de facto re-elected with the support of a one-third minority in Parliament.83 Curia President Zsolt András Varga criticized the case allocation reforms, arguing that they introduced bureaucratic hurdles and threatened to paralyze the judicial system.84
• Despite the criticism of the judicial reforms, the EC concluded in December that they sufficiently met the four judicial super milestones and unblocked €10.2 billion in suspended structural funds.85 However, it continued to withhold RRP funds since the government failed to meet all 27 super milestones (see Corruption section).
• The Curia president and the government continued to politically pressure the NJC in 2023, following a series of 2022 attacks on the NJC in the media and a smear campaign against some of its members.86 Zsolt András Varga spoke out against the NJC and the EC, claiming that the EC had adopted “arbitrary opinions” by the NJC in its yearly rule of law report.87 Gergely Gulyás, minister of the Prime Minister’s Office, accused the NJC of “badmouthing its government in Brussels” and negotiating advantages for its members through an exception in the May judicial package that allowed the 14 members of the NJC to seek reelection one time.88 The NJC members, however, announced in September that they would not use the exception and would step down at the end of their terms.89
• The NJC’s mandate was set to end in January 2024 after six years. Judges were to elect new NJC members following an internal nomination process. In a letter sent in December to a judicial association, Varga sought to influence the process. Varga said it would be “fortunate” if officials appointed by György Barna Senyei, president of the National Office for the Judiciary (NOJ), were among the new NJC members.90 Senyei, like Varga, is a Fidesz appointee. The International Association of Judges honored the NJC with the Judicial Independence Award in September, in recognition of its six-year tenure defending judicial independence.91

• In June, the Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO) published two previously unreleased reports on Hungary: the Fifth Round Evaluation Report from July 2022, regarding corruption prevention and integrity promotion in the central government and law enforcement, and the Fourth Interim Compliance Report from March 2023 on corruption prevention among members of parliament, judges, and prosecutors. The reports highlight that anticorruption efforts largely fail to address high-level corruption in government and law enforcement, and that employment, remuneration, and hiring practices lack transparency.92
• The latest annual report of the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) noted that it opened 15 fraud investigations and concluded 10 investigations with recommendations in Hungary between 2018 and 2022.93 Both figures were the highest in the EU during that period. Overall, OLAF detected 18 irregularities, also the most in the EU. The report recommended that Hungary repay 0.53 percent of all EU structural and agricultural funds it received during period.94
• Transparency International’s 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Hungary in 76th place out of 180 countries surveyed, the lowest ranking of any country in the EU.95
• In January, the EC suspended 21 Hungarian universities from the Erasmus+ scholarship program over corruption and conflict of interest concerns. The universities are managed through public asset management foundations that have board members with ties to the government and, in some cases, prominent politicians.96
• After the launch of the rule of law procedure against Hungary under the conditionality regulation, in 2022 the Council of the European Union suspended the disbursement of €6.3 billion from three cohesion policy programs until Hungary implemented measures to address the EC's concerns about the rule of law regarding public procurement, prosecutions, conflicts of interest, anticorruption efforts, and public interest trusts.97 In response to the EC’s requirements, the Integrity Authority (IA) established in 2022 published its first annual report in June.98 Its evaluation of the auditing mechanism of EU funds, public procurement, conflicts of interest, and asset declarations noted both substantial and procedural shortcomings in fighting corruption and highlighted Hungary’s failure to implement earlier recommendations.99 Although the IA criticized the government, watchdogs argue that it lacks independence and is weakened by its inability to enforce its recommendations.100
• The government did not advance any other anticorruption reforms in 2023 to address the EC’s or the IA’s concerns.101
• As a result, the EC concluded that Hungary failed to make the rule of law reforms necessary to release the funds suspended under the conditionality regulation, The disbursement of Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) funds also remained suspended until Hungary delivers on all required anticorruption measures.102

Author: Zsuzsanna Végh is a PhD researcher at the Chair of Comparative Politics of the European University Viadrina, a program officer at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and an associate researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations. She holds MA degrees in international relations and European studies from Central European University and international studies from the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest.