The AEJ International is hosting a Zoom meeting on April 13 to examine the results of Sunday’s Hungarian election.
AEJ members from all sections are invited to the Zoom conference scheduled for Monday, 13 April, at 1800 CET (1700/5 pm British Summer Time).
Colleagues from the Hungarian AEJ section and experts from the Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe (IDM) in Vienna will provide information and the conference will be facilitated by Austria’s Otmar Lahodynsky.
Details for the zoom connection are at:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89298230938?pwd=hijs7eby0J2h697zHNcxBbHhTgrrcP.1
Login information is available in an email from AEJ UK Secretary Charles Jenkins.
After 16 years in power, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party was widely reported as significantly trailing in public opinion polls but due to his reforms, the opinion leading Tisza party of former Orban supporter Peter Magyar would need a minimum 10 per cent lead to form a government and a two-thirds majority to change the laws. An estimated 43 per cent of the votes or Orban could block a new government’s laws, with the help of Hungary’s President and the High Court.
A high voter turnout was reported.
The result could change politics in Europe.
Orban’s right-wing government has become the major rallying point for right wing parties across Europe with close ties to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.
He has threatened to veto the EU’s 90 billion euro loan to Ukraine and the EU has frozen several billion euros in EU funding for Hungary as well as blocking participation in the Erasmus program for students at most Hungarian universities becuase of major shortcomings in the rule of law and severely restricted press freedom. Orbán’s challenger, Péter Magyar, has promised to repair Hungary’s relations with the EU.
