European Student Think Tank

The Hun­garian gov­ern­ment of Viktor Orbán has been repeatedly cri­ti­cised for tak­ing the coun­try down the road of author­it­ari­an­ism. After its grab on the Hun­garian National Bank, the EU and the IMF have finally decided to pre­vent a fur­ther deteri­or­a­tion of demo­cratic stand­ards. The decision comes late, but is right, because Hun­gary is start­ing to resemble Rus­sia more than any coun­try in the EU.

In the wake of the Tymoshenko trial, another spec­tac­u­lar trial might take place, this time in the EU. Former Hun­garian prime min­is­ter Fer­enc Gyurc­sany has been accused of “acts of ter­ror” against the Hun­garian people. With an accus­a­tion far more severe than fraud or cor­rup­tion, the reas­on­ing behind the government’s move is unclear and might backfire.

For a long time now Roma have been a hot topic of debate in numer­ous east­ern European coun­tries. In the fol­low­ing blog I will present a dif­fer­ent view, a dif­fer­ent kind of art­icle hop­ing to present the real iden­tity of this nomadic group of people

Should the EU remove the ban on air­line sub­ven­tions? How far will cer­tain gov­ern­ments go in pro­tect­ing their national air­lines from big­ger play­ers in the mar­ket? Is the European Union behav­ing slightly hypo­crit­ic­ally when ban­ning sub­ven­tions when the Union itself is provid­ing sub­ven­tions to some of its own industries?

Hungary’s new Media Law in puts the new EU-president in an undesir­able situ­ation. The con­tro­ver­sial law was enforced 1st Janu­ary 2011 – the same day Hun­gary star­ted its pres­id­en­tial period in the EU. The incon­veni­ent media storm against the media law is cer­tainly the worst start the Hun­gari­ans could dream of. The ques­tion is whether the media law is a poten­tial threat to democracy.