Hungary

A year ago today, we walked out from our previous workplace, Index.hu, after editor-in-chief Szabolcs Dull was suddenly terminated following a month-long struggle for the site's independence. In this video, our colleagues remember those tumultuous days.

Sándor Pintér, the Minister of Interior Affairs said that Hungary does not engage in unlawful secret surveillance. To precisely understand what that means, it is worth knowing how it works when it’s lawful.

Before Wednesday's cabinet meeting, we tried once more to get answers from members of the Hungarian government about the Pegasus surveillance scandal.

The referendum will include five questions concerning the so-called "Child Protection Act" adopted in June, over which the European Commission had launched three separate proceedings.

Telex tried asking several prominent members of the Hungarian governing party Fidesz about the wiretapping of several critics of Viktor Orbán's government, however, we did not receive substantive answers from the politicians behind cordons and policemen.

As the opposition alliance prepares for the primaries, Fidesz is set to give unprecedented handouts to the voting population in early 2022, right before the elections. However, this effort to garner support is likely to face some considerable objections.

Following up on the latest Hungarian anti-LGBT legislation that caused political turmoil in the EU, we asked members of the Hungarian government about the law's details and how they would respond if someone in their political community came out as gay.

Last Tuesday, the Hungarian parliament adopted legislation that prohibited sharing LGBT content with minors and limited sexual education in schools. Since then, 17 EU member states condemned the law in a joint statement and Ursula von der Leyen vowed to use all powers of the European Commission to protect the rights of EU citizens. But what is this law, and how does it fit into the Hungarian government’s anti-LGBT agenda?

What is the RRF, this hard-to-grasp abbreviation the meaning of which changed many times recently, what does it have to do with rule of law, and why doesn't the Hungarian government want any of what many call "free money?" A crash course on the political dimensions of the EU's Reconstruction Fund.

Thousands gathered in Budapest on Saturday to protest the construction of the Chinese Fudan University's Hungarian campus, which would cost the country €1.3 billion and jeopardise an ongoing affordable student housing project in southern Budapest. Video report from the protest.

At the time Hungary started using Sinopharm's vaccine to immunize the elderly, there was no way to know how effective or safe it was. Since then, WHO approved the Chinese jab, and Orbán seems to have scored an important communications goal against the opposition – but was he right, or was he lucky?

The third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, characterized by the Kent variant, tore through Hungary much quicker and deadlier than what we saw during the previous two. Here are the similarities and differences of the three waves, charted.

This is the second year Covid-19 forces the organisers of the largest Hungarian festival to cancel the event.

With a year left until what looks to be a tight election, the government is reallocating considerable amounts of public assets away from the state and into, e.g., foundations. The goal could be to sustain Orbán’s „System of National Cooperation” in the event that he should lose the 2022 election. However it may turn out, does this mean that future governments will no longer have a say in higher education? And what about the hundreds of valuable state properties that were recently transferred? Are they destined to forever remain in the possession of Fidesz loyalists? Opposition leaders don’t see the situation as being completely hopeless.

3 May is World Press Freedom Day, but the press is only as free as much it is allowed to report; here are the walls constantly hit by independent journalists in Hungary.

Hungarian civic organizations have launched their campaign titled "Vaccines for Life" to get people living in disadvantaged, segregated communities to sign up for the coronavirus vaccine. We took a look at how it went in Miskolc and the surrounding small towns.

Harvesting the official mortality data revealed that general health in Hungary is terrible and that the data provided by hospitals is far from standardized. Infographics about the first 25,000 coronavirus-related deaths in Hungary.

The construction of the Budapest campus of the Shanghai-based Fudan University has upset Hungarian domestic politics. The opposition-led Budapest is trying to oppose the project, but the Hungarian government seems relentless.

Reporters Without Borders warns that the Hungarian government's expanding hegemony over the media could inspire other European countries such as Poland or Slovenia.

Antal Rogán used to be a darling of pro-government tabloids, but ever since his new wife's real estate scandal, the Hungarian cabinet minister has vanished from the radar. We tried to get in touch with him for over two months, to no avail; In the end, we had to ask other prominent members of the governing party about what Orbán's most indispensable cabinet member is really doing.

Covid-19 has not spared disadvantaged communities, there were villages where everyone was infected at some point or another. Despite the danger, vaccine refusal is high due to fake news and misinformation spreading faster than the virus itself.

A ton of garbage makes its way to Hungary every year along the Tisza. The main source of the problem is in Transcarpathia, Ukraine, but there doesn’t seem to be an easy solution to the matter. This is a complex economic, environmental, and social issue – one which we present in a short documentary film on Telex.

An influential Hungarian diplomat caused an accident while driving drunk in Vienna. His children were in the back, and he refused the evidentiary breathalyser. However, the incident had no consequences in Austria or Hungary.

Petra Tóth's mother died of complications arising from COVID-19 in little under a week. Tamás Busák spent 44 days in the hospital, and he was on a ventilator for 17. Barbara Balás is one of the few women who were pregnant at the time of contracting the coronavirus, and she had to undergo a C-section prematurely. Hungarians whose lives were affected by the coronavirus told us about their experiences.

We discovered that the Hungarian Prime Minister's son has just graduated from one of the top military academies in the world and the roughly €100,000 training fee was paid by the Ministry of Defence. When we inquired about this at the government's weekly press conference, the spokesperson changed our question, removing any mention of Gáspár Orbán.

A recession of historic proportions, a significant loss of popularity, rule of law mechanism, a hostile US administration, a new German chancellor, and an opposition challenger – the Hungarian Prime Minister will have to face a number of difficulties this year, and he has work to do within his own party as well.

"Do not believe that every waking moment of our lives must be spent with comparing ourselves to men and that we should work in at least the same position, for at least the same pay they do,” Katalin Novák explained.