Representatives of Hungarian NGOs funded by George Soros, the billionaire financier and open borders campaigner, complain that proposals to increase financial transparency for foreign-funded groups constitute an “unprecedented attack” on “European values”.
The Hungarian government contends that “in a democracy, political representation comes through democratic legitimacy — elections — that should be void of foreign and nontransparent influencing”.
Hungarian law strictly separates rules for political and civil activity, according to the Hungarian government, which regards the pro-migration advocacy of Soros-linked groups as explicitly political.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán recently stated the country “cannot afford to allow organizations that remain in the shadows – not declaring who they receive their money from and for what purposes – to continuously encourage migrants to break Hungarian law to somehow get into the country.”
“By doing so, international organizations which are primarily linked to George Soros have overstepped a line,” Mr. Orbán added.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman, Zoltán Kovács, later elaborated:
“Soros drives a clear political agenda that calls for open society, and one of the pillars of this program is promoting immigration, supporting mass, illegal migration into Europe from the Middle East and Northern Africa, and acts against governments like Hungary’s, which prefer a pro-security approach. It’s no conspiracy theory; the billionaire is open about these plans.”
Goran Buldioski, who directs the Soros-funded Open Society Initiative, has responded by telling Politico: “The announced legislation is an unprecedented attack on dissenting voices by an EU member.”
The prospective legislation, which is expected to require NGOs to be transparent about foreign funding, has not, in fact, been announced in detail. Nevertheless, Buldioski believes “European values are now at stake in Budapest”.
A spokesman for Hungary’s International Communications Office told Breitbart London the government “truly believe that after 50 years of Communism, [which] has almost completely wiped out the organic structures of [our] once strong civil society, we need grass root organisations to reinforce themselves” — suggesting concern that this area should not become dominated by extra-national money serving extra-national interests.
“Accordingly, [we] have spent over 100 billion Hungarian forints supporting civil society for the past 6 years.”
The spokesman also made it clear that “any amendment to the existing legal environment will be in line with the Hungarian constitution (and obviously EU law) … since these guarantee the rights and working of civil society, it would be impossible to ‘undermine’ it.”
He added: “We are, of course, fully aware that, especially on behalf of the leftist/liberal opposition, claims [that the government want to undermine civil society] are extensively being used for political purposes.”
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