[This “Dispatch” appeared March 9, 2011, in Foreign Policy. It was re-published March 10 on The Mantle.]
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — Just days before Christmas, Hungary’s new right-wing government, which now controls a near-invincible two-thirds of parliament, succumbed to temptation: It rubber-stamped a draconian-sounding new media law that looked as if it would slip a leash of censorship around the necks of both traditional and online media.
The law would have required all domestic and foreign-owned media, including websites and blogs, to register with the authorities. It could also smack media organizations with crippling fines if their coverage was deemed to be lacking sufficient “balance” or respect for “human dignity.”
Moreover, all this would be interpreted and enforced by a new five-member “Media Council” — each member tapped by the party that steers parliament. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was understandably beside itself, and a representative branded the new law as “unprecedented in European democracies.”
Hungary is already one of the most worrisome countries in Europe. One poll of ex-communist Eastern Europe suggests that Hungarians are the most disillusioned with democracy and capitalism. And in last April’s elections, the European Union watched anxiously. Reigning Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany had been caught in September 2006 lying about the country’s economic woes, which incited the public and spurred a chain of events that decimated support for his Socialists. The right wing won big. Historically big. The leading opposition party, Fidesz, seized 53 percent of the vote; the scaremongering far right claimed a startling 17 percent, another landmark in the post-communist world.
In the months since, Fidesz and its parliamentary majority have tightened their grip by politicizing the Constitutional Court, central bank, state audit office, and the largely ceremonial post of president. Then came the media law.
For the European Union, the heavy-handed tactics of a ruling government in a smaller, ex-communist member might have been easier to ignore if not for the inconvenient fact that Hungary assumed the rotating EU presidency on New Year’s Day. With Budapest holding the gavel — and the limelight — Brussels was red-faced. It responded to the new Hungarian law with unparalleled scrutiny, including a European Commission inquiry.
Besieged by bad press — the Washington Post editorialized about the “Putinization” of Hungary, while the Guardian trumpeted the revival of “one-party rule” — Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his government lashed out at Hungary’s EU partners. Not only was Hungary unfairly being ganged up on, they charged, but it was the left-leaning members of the European Parliament conspiring to do so.
Nevertheless, Budapest vowed to amend the law. A government spokesman, Zoltan Kovacs, told FP that his side viewed it all as a quibble over “technical issues.” “We are most happy to clarify the law,” he said then, “to make it more exact.”
On the night of March 7, though, Hungary did more than clarify. Buckling under the pressure, the parliament struck and softened the law’s most contentious points, though the Fidesz-dominated Media Council seems untouched, as does the potential for huge fines. The reversal came as no surprise to critics of the current government.
“The EU is very proud of its values and norms,” says Peter Balazs, a former Hungarian foreign minister who helped pave Hungary’s EU accession in 2004. “How can it defend those values to third partners — like Belarus or Ukraine or China — when they’re not fully adhered to by its own members?”
This showdown, though, is about much more than Hungary. It’s the latest watershed moment in the European Union’s bumpy evolution over the past half-century. Not surprising, given that the “United States of Europe” started stretching eastward only seven years ago, expanding from 15 countries to today’s 27 — and now encompasses some half a billion people. Internally, tensions are rising between the East and West, the rich and poor, the large and small — especially when domestic politics pit national sovereignty against European values.
In addition, post-communist members, once so eager to please Brussels and join the exclusive club, are now insiders. The Easterners no longer feel like second-class members, compelled to kowtow to their Western counterparts. Take tiny Slovakia, which spurned unanimity and infuriated fellow members of the eurozone as the only state to thumb its nose and refuse to join the massive bailout of Greece. Nor do they tolerate being talked down to, as in 2003 when French President Jacques Chirac chided the Poles, saying that by backing the U.S.-led war in Iraq, they “missed a great opportunity to shut up.”
The new EU members “aren’t students anymore, but equal partners who have learned all the tricks from sitting there,” says Piotr Kaczynski, a Polish researcher with the Brussels-based Center for European Policy Studies. “They’re fighting for their space, for their voice to be heard, individually and regionally. No one wanted to give them that space, naturally, so they have to fight for it.”
Meanwhile, Brussels, long chastised for being toothless, is becoming increasingly assertive under European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, who is serving his second and final five-year term. Now free of the pressure to placate the boss — the EU member states — his commission is inching beyond its traditional role of enforcing technical rules on trade and economics, venturing into more politically sensitive issues.
Last September, for example, one commissioner compared France’s deportation of Roma to Nazi-era ethnic cleansing, and the commission threatened Paris with legal action. That’s a far cry from the decades of keeping your nose out of another’s business.
“The idea has been that, unless absolutely necessary, we don’t want to interfere in another’s domestic politics because the next time it could be us in the dock,” says Katinka Barysch, deputy director of the London-based Center for European Reform. “It’s a very fine line, a balancing act. We have to weigh the principle of national sovereignty with the democratic standards we’ve all signed up for.”
The origins of the growing confrontation between EU authorities and the continent’s far-right parties could be seen back in 2000, when Austria allowed the party of Jörg Haider, who had made controversial comments about his country’s Nazi-era past, into the governing coalition. Fellow EU members assailed the move and feebly tried to isolate Vienna. The broader point was not just to reinforce European “values,” but to send a message to then-aspiring EU members in the East, like Hungary: There are red lines you dare not cross.
At the time, the right-wing government of then, as now, Prime Minister Viktor Orban was flirting with Hungary’s own far-right. Orban described Haider’s electoral success as “a stone being thrown into an intellectually and politically stagnant pond.” The EU reaction, he said at the time, “forces us all to think harder than usual about the deeper meaning of democracy.”
But Hungary and other Eastern European countries still had many more hoops to jump through before they would enter the club. Brussels drove them forward, dangling carrot and stick. When EU accession arrived, in 2004, this leverage evaporated. The East rejoiced — and exhaled. “In every single country, there was a degree of relaxation,” says Kaczynski of CEPS.
His own country has since crossed swords with Brussels several times: for example, the so-called “vodka wars,” which restricted the definition of the liquor to the Polish specialty of potato- and grain-based spirits; demands that Poland’s new EU voting rights should be greater considering the millions of its citizens killed by Germany; and Polish threats to mandate chemical castration for convicted pedophiles.
And when the Czechs took over the largely ceremonial EU presidency two years ago, it was Europe’s enfant terrible, President Vaclav Klaus, who occupied the seat. Klaus had already gained notoriety by theorizing that the global economic crisis was spurred by too much regulation, not too little; brushing aside concerns of climate change as a “myth”; and even calling for the European Union to be “scrapped.”
Yet it was Bulgaria that became a true test of the European Union’s willingness to get tough. As the European Union’s poorest, most corrupt members, Bulgaria and Romania were inducted in 2007 — with strings attached. Bulgaria in particular had to pledge to crack down on rampant government corruption and dozens of mafia slayings that for years had gone unpunished.
By 2008, Brussels was fed up. It froze hundreds of millions of euros in EU financial aid to Sofia, an unprecedented penalty. It was a tough message not only to Bulgaria, but to fellow EU members plagued by corruption and Balkan countries, such as Serbia and Croatia, knocking on the door.
Today, once again, Brussels feels the need to send a message — by flexing its muscles against Hungary. In this case, there was no need to utter an ultimatum: amend, or else. It seems that the will to name and shame a member state applies just enough pressure.
“Nobody wants to be in a position where they’re vulnerable to constant criticism,” says Gyorgy Schopflin, a Fidesz member of the European Parliament who is an advocate of tighter restrictions on the media. “It’s unpleasant, and it’s bad for the image.”
Hungary, after all, remains sensitive to Western opinion. The Financial Times reported on March 4 that Orban’s government has hired a London PR firm and lobbyist “to improve its battered public image and convince investors that economic and fiscal policy is in good hands.”
After the March 7 vote in Budapest, European Commissioner Neelie Kroes announced that Brussels would be “quite active in monitoring” the law’s application — presumably with a hand from Hungarian watchdogs on the ground.
If the European Union’s new name-and-shame tactic re-creates the lever, missing since 2004, to nudge Hungary and others toward better behavior — and not revert to the old authoritarian reflex — that’s just fine by Hungarians like Balazs, the former foreign minister.
“With such a parliamentary majority in Hungary, and without sufficient opposition, it’s very good for the whole country that we are now inside the EU, not outside,” says Balazs, currently director of the Center for EU Enlargement Studies in Budapest. “What is missing inside the country, we get it from the EU family. That is where the pressure comes from. And there needs to be that pressure.”
Michael J. Jordan, a Bratislava, Slovakia-based freelance journalist, has lived in and reported from post-communist Central and Eastern Europe since 1993. He blogs at https://jordanink.wordpress.com.
Yesterday I already posted a comment here, but it seems it did not pass your censorship criteria. It is interesting to see this when you are accusing the Hungarian media law of promoting censorship censorship, you feel perfectly free to censor those who disagree with you. So, I will try once again.
You write: “It could also smack media organizations with crippling fines if their coverage was deemed to be lacking sufficient “balance” or respect for “human dignity.”
It is unbelievable that after months information sharing and public debate of the Hungarian media law you still did not actually read the law. If you would have red the law, you would know that, for example (I picked only one example) your quoted statement is simply not true.
PLRASE READ THE LAW! If you would do so, you would see, that THERE ARE NO FINES FOR “UNBALANCED REPORTING”!
You are still writing your article on the old Talking Points, circulated by the Hungarian opposition parties.
Regarding th EP:
This is a political witch-hunt. If this is how the European Parliament does business, than it is degrading itself to a joke. It is a garage parliament.
When a country fully abides by an EP Commission’s ruling, on what basis does the EP demand further action? If the MEPs are not satisfied with the laws by which the said commission arrived at its ruling, than they should first change the law, and then they make sure that every country abides by the new law. You either respect the democratic process both in the EP and its member countries, or you are starting to behave like a dictatorship.
To pick out one country and condemn its laws, after that country fully collaborated with EP authorities to bring the law in question in line with EP laws, is clearly politically motivated. These actions are driven by hurt egos and partisan politics.
I never thought I would say this, but the European Parliament is a joke!
Hello “newsreader”: I assure you that I didn’t censor your first comment. I just didn’t receive it. In fact, so long as you keep the language clean, I’m ready to publish any dissent … mjj
Thank you for you note. I accpet your explanation.
newsreader, i noticed you do not point to the law or any “talking points” of your own that says there will be no fines. what do you say about the amnesty list of fines for a breach of the law:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/protests-over-restrictive-hungarian-media-law-2011-01-14
from EUR 35,000 to EUR 730,000, or even closure.
the law itself, if you read it, says many times that fines will be collected for violations.
http://www.nmhh.hu/dokumentum.php?cid=25694
so i do not understand why you say there is no fine.
also, you compare a private blog filter with a government policy on censorship? it seems in your complaint you do not understand what you are talking about.
you are still completely *free* to post your comment somewhere else if it gets filtered here. in fact, you might even get more views if you post somewhere else, so the inability to post here carries no real risk or harm.
government censorship is completely different. it does not offer options for dissent. you not only would be unable to post somewhere else but you actually could be fined and jailed for expressing yourself.
in other words, your complaint about being censored here is an argument FOR the actions of the European Parliament.
i hope you can see how you contradict yourself.
@David Ottenheimer
Obviously, you did not read the law either, and you also (together with Amnesty International) are still writing based on the old Talking Points of the Hungarian Socialist Party. (Shame on Amnesty International for not checking their sources prior to pontificating a judgment! I hope they do a better job at this in their other cases.)
Now, about what the law actually says. In § 181.5 it says the following: “In addition to the foregoing, no legal consequences as defined in Articles 186–187 may be applied against the breaching entity.”
The “foregoing” refers to “requesting” the media provider to publish a correction (if there was really a problem).
Articles 186-187 are the ones talking abut fines. And as you can see, they are excluded (please read the law if you already provided a link for it).
This article is a case in point, regarding the law. There was an opinion published here about the Hungarian media law, about its alleged handing out fines for “unbalanced” reporting. As it turns out, the publication of this opinion is a clear case of misinformation (it is not factual, it is not true, it is a lie). So, who is responsible for rectifying this situation?
While, I am a firm believer of the freedom of the press (it is the corner stone of democracy), its freedom is not absolute (absolute freedom does not exist). It has responsibilities that go hand in hand with its privileges.
In this example, a false statement has been made, which is influencing people’s opinions and lives. Yet, when someone objects to it, he /she can be easily brushed off. This is how distrust, suspicion and animosity is planted in society. With the media getting more and more immediate impact on people’s lives, it is paramount that the media feel accountable for its actions.
The reason for this is that I, as the consumer, also have rights! I have the right for accurate information, and not to what the media provider thinks I should hear (be that this blog, a national newspaper, the Amnesty Intonation or whoever!).
And yes, in this regard, this blogger also has responsibilities towards public!
@David Ottenheimer
Regarding your comments about censorship. Censorship is censorship, whether it is done by one person, a media outlet or a government. In this particular case, apparently the blogger did not receive my comments. I have to believe that. Had the blogger decide not to publish my comments (in a publicly available comment section) addressing the issues discussed in the article, simply because they disagreed with his/her points, that would have constituted censorship, plain and simple.
I thought it was Romania (not Poland) which was chided by Chirac for missing “a great opportunity to shut up.” But I just checked your link to the CNN story and I see that it was a comment to all CEE states that supported Bush in Iraq.
Here’s another good quote from that CNN article:
“Romania and Bulgaria were particularly irresponsible. If they wanted to diminish their chances of joining Europe they could not have found a better way,” Chirac said.
What an ass. Good to see that the law has finally caught up with him.