Authoritarian Innovation Inside the EU

Fifteen years into Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s rule—which has turned Hungary into an electoral autocracy—the country’s civic space is experiencing a renewed tightening. With the 2026 parliamentary election looming, the governing Fidesz party faces its first credible challenger since 2010: Recent polls give the newcomer party Respect and Freedom (Tisza) a narrow lead. Meanwhile, inflation remains high and the economic recovery is fragile. To shore up its base, the government now recasts itself as Hungary’s sole protector against foreign and domestic “enemies”. At the same time, it deploys dehumanizing rhetoric and restrictive laws against civil society and the media to silence dissent. Losing control of the narrative could cost Orbán the two-thirds constitutional majority that has long insulated him from accountability; intimidation has therefore become his strategy.

The latest offensive—which unfolds under the guise of sovereignty protection and safeguarding of children—is rooted in a long and incremental constriction. As early as 2017, the so-called “Lex NGO” forced associations receiving more than 7.2 million forints (about $25,000 at the time) in foreign support to register publicly as “organizations financed from abroad”. The EU Court of Justice struck down the law in 2020. Media pluralism has been gradually strangled through politically driven takeovers of independent outlets and the creation of the Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA), with its pro-government outlets financed through a steady stream of state advertising. Reminiscent of authoritarian contexts, surveillance has also entered the toolkit. In 2021, investigative journalists exposed the use of the Israeli NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware to target Hungarian journalists and business figures critical of the government. Each of these measures normalized state intrusion into civic life and paved the way for further intimidation and pressure.

The government’s now-prevalent narrative acquired institutional form in February 2024, following the adoption of a sovereignty protection law the year before, with the establishment of the Sovereignty Protection Office (SPO)—whose mandate is to protect the country’s “constitutional identity”. The office soon targeted anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International Hungary and investigative portal Átlátszó, both often critical of the government, and essentially branded them “foreign agents”. The SPO’s reports have supplied pro-government media with a ready-made storyline claiming externally funded subversion. The European Commission ultimately referred Hungary to the Court of Justice of the EU over the sovereignty protection law in October 2024.

Orbán sealed this narrative in his State-of-the-Nation address on February 22, 2025, promising to create the constitutional and legal conditions for dealing with those “serving foreign interests” and finishing off the “empire’s Budapest branch” by Easter. This was also a nod of appreciation to the White House’s new occupant, who was busy cutting US foreign aid for democracy support around the world, including in Hungary. In his March 15 speech, Orbán took an even more radical tone, promising an “Easter-time cleaning” of “bugs that survived the winter”, and referring to a “shadow army” of judges, journalists, and NGOs that “have been around too long” and who “survived too much”. Such dehumanizing metaphors and radical claims serve to lower the social cost of repression while keeping the core Fidesz electorate mobilized.

The extreme rhetoric has been matched with lawfare. New measures have targeted the freedom of assembly and expression in pursuit of the government’s “anti-woke” culture war. In March, the parliament fast-tracked legislation that allows for the ban of Budapest’s Pride march under the guise of child protection and authorizes the use of facial recognition technology to identify participants and fine them should a banned protest take place. The European Commission reacted by launching an investigation into whether the new legislation is in breach of the EU’s AI Act, warning that real-time biometric surveillance at protests would violate Europe’s near-total ban on such practices.

A month later, a constitutional amendment entrenched the ban by putting the protection of children (as interpreted by the governing party) above the exercise of any fundamental right—essentially creating the constitutional foundations for restricting citizens’ rights and freedoms. In the same breath, the amendment reduced gender to a binary legal category. In an unprecedented move of authoritarian escalation, the amendment also empowered authorities to suspend, with limited room for appeal, the Hungarian citizenship of dual nationals who are deemed to threaten the country’s security or sovereignty. This clause, the implications of which are unclear by design, is aimed at critics in the diaspora.

The establishment of the SPO, the Pride-ban legislative package, and the “vermin” vocabulary are all part and parcel of an escalating strategy of intimidation, the purpose of which is to demonstrate strength, institute control, and silence dissenting voices ahead of the 2026 elections.

The Orbán government’s moves are not unique. They mirror authoritarian innovations perfected elsewhere. The sovereignty protection law and the SPO’s mandate closely mirror the framework introduced by Russia’s 2012 “foreign agent” legislation. It now even bars designated groups from publicizing their mission and work, undercutting their ability to operate. A recent amendment to the Russian citizenship law also allows authorities to strip naturalized Russians of citizenship for dissent. Orbán’s threat to suspend citizenship for “national security” reasons carries this logic to an EU member state. The Pride prohibition borrows from Turkey, where Istanbul’s march has been banned since 2015. Fifteen participants were detained in June 2024 alone. Finally, Hungary’s plan for facial-recognition policing echoes Belgrade’s Huawei-built Safe City system, which rights groups document as a tool for tracking protesters and journalists. It comes only a year after the Chinese and Hungarian interior ministers signed a framework agreement on law enforcement and security cooperation in February 2024 that also entails capacity-building.

These parallels reveal more than the diffusion of authoritarian practices. They showcase the Hungarian government’s deliberate effort to adapt a combination of these practices to the EU context, exploiting legal grey zones, protracted EU infringement procedures, and Washington’s new indifference to democratic backsliding. If the Hungarian government succeeds in cementing this arsenal of illiberal measures, it will set a precedent that emboldens like-minded actors both within the EU and in candidate states. The EU’s and member states’ responses must match the speed and severity of the threat. Without decisive action, the coming year could see authoritarian practices take firmer root inside Europe.