Under Orban, Hungary has for years enacted crackdowns on NGOs and the country’s independent media.
Hungary is leading a crackdown on NGOs and media outlets operating in the country that receive funding from the US and other international sources.
An ally of US President Donald Trump, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban said his government was going “line by line” through organisations that have received financial assistance from the US.
Under Orban, Hungary has for years enacted crackdowns on NGOs and the country’s independent media, passing laws that critics argue seek to stigmatise and hinder groups that provide protection for women and minorities, offer legal and human rights assistance, and expose official corruption.
“Now is the moment when these international networks have to be taken down, they have to be swept away,” Orban said. “It is necessary to make their existence legally impossible.”
Trump’s decision to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the agency charged with delivering humanitarian assistance overseas, has only emboldened the Hungarian president. He has praised Trump’s slash of funding, claiming such aid had been used to fund organisations that sought to “topple” his government.
Orban said people who work for organisations that received USAID funding could be considered “agents”.
“All money coming from America should be made public, and those who receive it should have sanctions enacted against them,” Orban said.
In 2023, Orban’s right-wing government launched the Sovereignty Protection Office, an authority tasked with investigating organisations and media outlets it deems to be exerting foreign influence.
Under Orban, Hungary has been accused by numerous local and foreign bodies of grave democratic backsliding, with the EU withholding billions in funding to the country as a result.