Fidesz

George Soros, founder and chairman of the Open Society Foundations, in Brussels, Belgium, 27 April 2017. EPA-EFE/OLIVIER HOSLET

The presidents of the opposition parties - including the liberal Democratic Coalition, the Socialists, the young emerging Momentum, the leftist-liberal Dialogue, the greenish LMP and the former radical rightist Jobbik - have agreed to nominate only one candidate in each of the 106 individual constituencies.

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Yet even before a sleeper is laid, the Hungarian government has thrown a cloak of secrecy over the project, raising serious questions about transparency and accountability.

On April 8, the government submitted a draft bill to classify details of the Budapest-Belgrade railway plan, ostensibly to protect national interests. 

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, his Norwegian counterpart Erna Solberg and 11 other national leaders of the conservative European People's Party have written to the EPP's president, Donald Tusk, calling for the ejection from the group of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz party due to authoritarian tactics.

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Rights groups warn that legislation submitted to the Hungarian parliament, giving the government of Viktor Orban unprecedented power of decree in the fight against COVID-19, would have a "chilling effect" on independent media in the country.

To be launched in mid-March, the national survey of public opinion concerns the "jail business", a term coined by government propagandists to refer to criminals who sue the state for huge sums in compensation, citing poor prison conditions.

Call it the "subsidy paradox": EU cash meant to encourage development ends up misused by populist governments whose very existence undermines the bloc's cherished values. Worse, it gives them stamina and strength.

"I am not here to excuse my grandfather, nor would I like to ponder how someone becomes a murderer," Pokorni said at a solemn ceremony in mid-January at the site of a former Jewish hospital in Budapest.