Living like in Hungary: Orban Bankrolling Romania ‘Ethnic Parallelism’

Erdélyi Médiatér Egyesület has since snapped up the most important Hungarian-language daily newspapers in Transylvania, several glossy magazines, a literary periodical, television and radio and the most important news portal, Székelyhon.

At Főtér, editor-in-chief Sándor Fall said the money meant little for his operation beyond a new layout and two recent new hires. He dismissed concerns about editorial independence: "No one tells us what we can write about. We write about what we think is important."

Nevertheless, he admitted that without outside funding, Főtér and other Hungarian-language outlets in Transylvania would struggle to survive.

Indeed, observers of Viktor Orban's Hungary are sceptical that such largesse comes without strings attached.

László Dávid, Viktor Orbán and Béla Kató. Photo: Balázs Szecsődi, Press office of the Prime Minister, Hungary

They see in his government's unprecedented spending on ethnic Hungarians beyond Hungary's borders an extension of the 'illiberal democracy' Orban's Fidesz party has instituted at home since taking power in 2010.

In Transylvania, huge sums have been spent on Hungarian-language media, sports facilities, kindergartens, schools and churches, constructing what Tamás Kiss, a researcher at the Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities, described to BIRN as a system of "ethnic parallelism - to build up and maintain a system in which Hungarians can live their life as it would be not in Romania but in Hungary."

And media consumption is crucial, he said.

When Főtér says it is not censored, "I believe them," said Zoltán Sipos, editor-in-chief of the only investigative media outlet for Romania's ethnic Hungarian community, Átlátszó Erdély, or Transparent...