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Europe Calling “Hungary votes: Orbán or the rule of law?”
Recording:
Dear friends,
On 12th of April, Hungary will elect a new parliament. This will decide whether, after a total of 20 years, Viktor Orbán will become Prime Minister once again or whether opposition leader Peter Magyar will prevail.
Orbán continues to trail Magyar in the polls, but the gap is narrowing. This is partly because Orbán is now, as in the last elections, handing out massive sums of money to pensioners, soldiers and teachers, amounting to several billion euros.
At the same time, Orbán has deployed the military across the country, claiming that Ukrainian sabotage attacks are imminent. Civil society fears that these soldiers could also be on standby to suppress demonstrations should Orbán attempt to rig the election.
This election also casts a shadow over European politics: Orbán’s veto against loans for Ukraine, despite having previously agreed to them at the EU summit – allegedly to force Ukraine to repair the oil pipeline from Russia more quickly, which had been damaged by Russian attacks – is widely seen as an election campaign manoeuvre.
In our webinar, in collaboration with MEP Daniel Freund and Anton Hofreiter, Chair of the European Affairs Committee, we will examine the election campaign in Hungary with high-profile guests and gain a deeper understanding of the parties, their manifestos and the key figures.
Our guests include:
– Daniel Hegedüs, Deputy Director at the Institute for European Politics (IEP)
– Márta Pardavi, Co-Chair of the human rights and rule of law NGO Hungarian Helsinki Committee
– Judit Zeisler, Head of Public Policy at Transparency International Hungary
– Anton Hofreiter MP, Chair of the European Affairs Committee
– Daniel Freund MEP, Member of the European Parliament and anti-corruption expert
– Moderator: Maximilian Fries, Executive Director of Europe Calling e.V.
Date: Monday, 23 March 2026, 7.00–8.30 pm
Register here: https://t1p.de/gbhan
With simultaneous interpretation in German and English.
Join us and invite others!
With European regards,
Maximilian Fries and everyone at Europe Calling e.V.