He used to be Orbán's speechwriter, he assisted in the listing of civic activists, and will now lead the Office for Sovereignty Protection

There is perhaps no better indication of the kind of entity the Office for Sovereignty Protection that is to be set up under the recently adopted Sovereignty Protection Act is going to be, than the person Viktor Orbán wishes to see at its helm. The pro-government Magyar Nemzet reported at the end of last week that Tamás Lánczi, former deputy state secretary of the Orbán government, who has also worked as chief researcher at the government-backed Századvég Research Center, and is one of the leaders of the most important platform for government propaganda, the public media, will be appointed as head of the Sovereignty Protection Authority. Tamás Lánczi will take his oath of office in mid-January in front of President Katalin Novák. His appointment is for six years and he will be earning nearly HUF 5 million (13,000 euros) gross per month.

Judging by Lánczi's career, Viktor Orbán could not have found a more ideal person for the job. His appointment ensures that the head of the Office for Sovereignty Protection, which is tasked with investigating "foreign influence", will be a man who himself has for years been vocal concerning the narrative about the Soros network and the (fake) NGOs allegedly plotting to overthrow the government. The government also won't need to worry about Lánczi having a different view of the true function of the press than they do. This is important because one of the objectives of the Sovereignty Protection Act is likely to "discipline" the independent press.

The new office, which will begin operating on 1 February, is supposed to examine 'processes suggesting foreign interference', and will be able to inspect practically anyone, at any time, without having to justify who it is targeting and why. This is one of the reasons why the independent press and the NGOs stigmatized by the government have protested the introduction of the law. The Office for Sovereignty Protection will not be a public authority, meaning that it will not be able to investigate or sanction anyone, but will only be able to produce reports. As seen in the example of the 2017 law about NGOs, however, this alone could be enough to stigmatise organisations and press outlets critical of the government and to make their work more difficult.

The power that this appointment will grant to Lánczi is well illustrated by the fact that the Office for Sovereignty Protection will also be authorised to obtain data about and from the investigated entities themselves. Additionally, an amendment to the law would provide the head of the office with immunity, which could make monitoring his activities even more difficult.

He considers listing civic activists working with NGOs real journalism

Lánczi received a degree in political science from the Faculty of Law and Political Science at ELTE in 2003, and made his way into big politics very quickly. According to an article in Magyar Narancs, he was working in the Prime Minister's Office as early as 2021 and was at one point a member of Viktor Orbán's speechwriting team.

In 2006, when Tibor Navracsics was elected leader of the Fidesz parliamentary group, he became his cabinet chief, and after Fidesz came to power in 2010, he followed him to the Ministry of Public Administration and Justice, where he was cabinet chief and deputy state secretary to Navracsics who had become minister. His mandate did not last long though. In September 2011, at the suggestion of Navracsics, and for reasons still unknown, Orbán dismissed Lánczi.

He then became head researcher at Századvég, where his father, András Lánczi, also worked. From there, in 2016, he headed to London. A good indication of how deeply embedded Lánczi is in the NER-system (Nemzeti Együttműködés Rendszere = System of National Cooperation. The term coined by the Orbán government after their election victory in 2010 to refer to the changes in government they were about to introduce, and which has since become a word in its own right in colloquial Hungarian, used to refer to Fidesz' governing elite, complete with the politicians and the oligarchs profiting from the system.) is that he became managing director of Árpád Habony's (Orbán’s longtime unofficial spin-doctor) London-based political consultancy firm, Danube Business Consulting (DBC) Ltd. Habony co-founded the company with the late US campaign consultant Arthur J. Finkelstein in 2016. At the time, DBC worked on campaigns for right-wing political parties in Croatia and France.

In 2017, Lánczi became editor-in-chief of Figyelő, a weekly newspaper on economic affairs that had seen better days, and which used to be known for high-quality, critical journalism. The insolvent paper had been bought up by Mária Schmidt, who enjoys close ties to Fidesz. The paper was taken over by an editorial board, which prompted the departure of several journalists. It was thus under Lánczi's leadership that an article listing the "mercenaries of George Soros" was published in 2018. The list contained the names of hundreds of people, including civic activists, lawyers, academics and journalists. Moreover, there were some on the list who had died years before, as well as some who had always been considered supporters of Fidesz.

After the article was published, speaking on the television station ATV, Lánczi called the list a piece of true journalism, saying that they had approached a tough subject with courage.

In 2022, the Court of First Instance ruled that Figyelő's list of supposed "Soros mercenaries" was unlawful and fear-inducing.

Lánczi remained at Figyelő – which was producing increasingly poor sales figures – for a long time, and left in 2019 after the restructuring of the Fidesz media empire. According to press reports, it was the head of the Fidesz media holding, Gábor Liszkay, who had pushed out the staff linked to Mária Schmidt.

Lánczi's journey then led him to the 21st Century Institute, which is linked to Schmidt, who is also director of the House of Terror. He did not stay there long either, spending only a few months working in the community of thinkers committed to "national sovereignty, freedom, democracy, market economy and Christian culture". At the time, our team reported on his departure at our previous place of work, Index, saying that the unexpected departure of Lánczi and ten of his colleagues was not due to political conflict, but rather because of problems with work organization. In any case, Mária Schmidt described the mass departure as a coup against her lead by Lánczi.

Lánczi currently works as director of the online service of MTVA, which oversees the public media, where he is also in charge of the programme entitled 48 minutes. It is indeed somewhat symbolic that the future head of the Office for Sovereignty Protection holds a senior position at the public media, whose bias is even acknowledged by public figures close to Fidesz, and which has been known to publish defamatory material about "journalists who are using questions to provoke".

He explained why the Office for Sovereignty Protection was needed – as early as 2018

Despite the conflicts he has had within NER – such as his dismissal from the position of Deputy State Secretary or his departure from Figyelő and the 21st Century Institute – Lánczi has remained loyal to Viktor Orbán and the policies of Fidesz throughout. He has never expressed any criticism of the system and has always supported the government's position in everything. If deemed necessary, he did not hesitate to go up against anyone who dared to criticize the authorities. On one occasion, for example, he wrote a lengthy article criticizing the Golden Bear Award-winning Hungarian film director Ildikó Enyedi because he believed she had said bad things about Hungary. Also memorable was his comment relating to the fireworks during the statehood celebrations on 20 August, when he argued that the mere image of the cross in the sky was enough to make the skin of the evil one burn.

Lánczi is unlikely to disappoint Fidesz as head of the Office for Sovereignty Protection. In the aforementioned 2018 TV programme, he actually summed up why there might be a need for the office he will now apparently be leading. In the context of the list they had published, he said that the civilians on the Figyelő list were interfering in the most serious matters of sovereignty when attempting to meddle in politics.

"These are the people who are essentially engaged in politics, and this is actually the message of the list as well...they are not individuals, but they are people who are engaging in politics, whether they know it or not, but they are interfering in big politics, and in the most serious matters of sovereignty. When their political interest requires it, they engage in politics, and when it does not, they take a step back and say, “Hold on a second, we are civilians.”

As 444 reported, he also said that it is worth paying attention to these civilians because voters have the right to know who is trying to influence public life and what their intentions are. This is very much in line with the government's justification for setting up the Office for Sovereignty Protection.

Something that happened on Lánczi's programme on the public media on 14 December – so two weeks before it was announced that Tamás Lánczi himself would head the Office for Sovereignty Protection – is especially ironic. The programme featured analysts who have always agreed with the government on everything, explaining that the much-criticized Sovereignty Protection Act was in fact not based on the Russian model, but rather followed the American and Israeli examples.

Századvég analyst Zoltán Kiszelly said it was wrong for the dollar-funded left and its media to compare the Sovereignty Protection Act to Russian legislation. To which Máté Kulifia, editor of the weekly Hetek, added that the Sovereignty Protection Act is not about "the NGOs, individuals and media organizations that US Ambassador David Pressman is concerned about."

While it is true that the Sovereignty Protection Act makes no specific mention of the press, it is also true that when announcing the draft law back in September, Fidesz parliamentary group leader Máté Kocsis said that the bill was intended "to ruffle the feathers of left-wing journalists, pseudo-NGOs and “dollar-funded politicians". Since then, Fidesz has made contradictory statements about whether or not the Sovereignty Protection Act is applicable to the media or not. Despite the constant obfuscation, Viktor Orbán made it quite evident in his latest radio interview that the press was also being targeted with the Sovereignty Protection Act.