Meanwhile, Fidesz openly awaits financial support from abroad

On Tuesday afternoon, the Hungarian parliament will be debating Fidesz's bill, which the bigger ruling party claims will increase transparency in public life, but which is in reality designed to undermine media outlets and NGOs receiving any kind of funding from abroad.

Meanwhile, on Fidesz’s website, the party continues to welcome financial support from abroad to a specified account number listed there. While – once the law has been adopted – domestic media outlets or non-governmental organizations which have been placed on the watchlist will have to prove the origin of even a few thousand forints sent in by a donor from Hungary, it is unclear how Fidesz can verify the origin of foreign funds.

The basic idea of the proposal submitted by Fidesz representative János Halász last week is that anyone who receives funding from abroad and engages in activities aimed at influencing public life will be placed on a register and face extremely serious sanctions.

The statements issued by the Sovereignty Protection Office, which can hardly be called analyses, clearly indicate that, in their view, anyone who receives financial support from abroad certainly represents foreign interests. If the bill is passed, such media outlets and civil society organizations would also not be allowed to receive the designated 1% of citizens' personal income tax ((in Hungary it is possible to specifically allocate one percent of one’s personal income tax to certain organizations and causes of one’s choosing-TN). Furthermore, if someone from Hungary wanted to support an organization on the list, they would have to provide a “fully conclusive private document” to prove that they did not receive the money – either directly or indirectly – from a foreign source.

Meanwhile, Fidesz, the party behind the law, is proclaiming on its website that it also welcomes financial donations from “supportive Hungarian citizens” living abroad, and they even provide an IBAN number, which is necessary for foreign transfers. According to the announcement, the only information that needs to be provided is the supporter's address and the word “support.”

Naturally, one explanation for this could be that they are only expecting money from Hungarian citizens living abroad, as this is legally permissible under party law. However, according to the proposal submitted by Fidesz MP János Halász, anyone with dual citizenship, i.e. an individual who has both Hungarian and another citizenship, is considered a foreigner.

This then raises the question of how Fidesz verifies that the money it receives from abroad is actually from Hungarian citizens and from Hungarian citizens alone.

According to the description on their donation page, donors do not have to indicate anything of the sort when making a transfer, so nobody has to prove their citizenship. This raises the question of how the party can verify that the donor indeed only has Hungarian citizenship. Another question is how they verify that any money sent from abroad did not come directly or indirectly from a foreigner.

We have therefore sent the following questions to Fidesz:

• Why did Fidesz provide an IBAN account number for foreign donations, and why is Fidesz accepting foreign donations?
• How much money has Fidesz received from abroad to date?
• What has Fidesz used these funds from abroad for, and how will it use them in the future?
• How do they verify that the person transferring money from abroad is a Hungarian citizen, and in particular, exclusively a Hungarian citizen?
• Are they concerned that this could lead to them being added to the Sovereignty Protection Office's list?

In November 2023, the former opposition prime ministerial candidate Péter Márki-Zay brought this up to Tamás Lánczi, who has since then been appointed as head of the Sovereignty Protection Office and to whom Fidesz has now given the power to decide who should be branded with the new law. At the time, Lánczi responded by saying that he saw no problem with a private individual transferring €10, but that it was a problem that billions had flowed in from abroad for the opposition coalition's campaign.

In any case, speaking on Sunday, Fidesz president Viktor Orbán stated that: “Those involved in politics should not receive money from abroad. This is not a big ask, but rather a modest and simple one.”

In 2024, the State Audit Office published a document on whether, in their opinion, the various parties had spent their 2022 campaign funds lawfully. The former six-party opposition coalition was fined 520 million forints (around € 1 million 290 thousand), but the State Audit Office found everything in order with Fidesz-KDNP. According to their report, Fidesz-KDNP had used the budgetary support in compliance with the rules. “The coalition observed the financing restrictions on prohibited subsidies and did not accept financial contributions from legal entities, organizations without legal status, other states, foreign organizations, or natural persons who are not Hungarian citizens,” nor did it accept anonymous donations.

The summary of the ÁSZ report does not indicate how thoroughly the background of the funds received from Hungarian citizens living abroad was investigated. The detailed report only states that “based on the evaluated samples,” no such cases were found.

As of the publication of this article, Fidesz has not responded to our questions.