“Hungary the principal target of EU bureaucracy,” Claims MCC Brussels Director

In a blog post titled “NGOs Have Become The Anti-democratic Mercenaries Of The EU Oligarchy,” MCC Brussels director Frank Füredi argued that the EU-NGO propaganda complex has sought to use pliant NGOs to promote regime change in Hungary and Poland.

He pointed out that the EU has channeled significant funds to NGOs in countries like Poland (€38 million) and Hungary (€41 million) through the CERV program (Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Program), aimed at promoting EU values, and in some cases, undermining the government. As an example, he cited the Ökotárs Foundation in Hungary, which received a €3.3 million grant from the EU. The organization has been involved in disputes with the Orbán government, accused of being a “local distribution center” of foreign influence.

Frank Füredi recalled that this network started in the 1980s, before the Soviet Bloc’s countries started gaining independence. He wrote that

the initial goal was to insert “supposedly neutral, politically non-aligned NGOs into the sphere of East European politics. Their objective was to ensure that the new post-communist regimes would fall under the spell of the globalist post-liberal values favored by the Western political elites.”

He continued that in the 1980s and 1990s, Western NGOs and international institutions collaborated with East European liberal intellectuals and politicians to educate post-communist societies about the pitfalls of nationalism, and the virtues of an anti-sovereignist, civic values-based society.

“To ensure that the former members of the Soviet bloc returned to a form of ‘normal liberalism,’ the EU and global network NGOs mobilized their resources to re-educate sovereignist inclined East Europeans. Since the early 1990s, this network has played a central role in promoting American woke values in Central Europe. This network’s main target was the national sensibility that possessed deep roots with societies that had recently gained freedom from Soviet domination. From the standpoint of the EU oligarchy and their cosmopolitan collaborators in America, people’s aspiration to secure national independence needed to be challenged and the value of sovereignty discredited,” Mr. Füredi outlined.

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— Frank Furedi (@Furedibyte) March 24, 2025

According to Füredi, in the decades to follow,

a silent war against the national traditions of Central European societies was promoted by NGO activists through influencing educational and cultural institutions to embrace the values of American identity politics.

He added that the EU took a lead in organizing what was in effect a culture war against sovereignist values. The EU also promoted diversity and minority rights as a counterpoint to the authority of the nation. In effect, it claimed that minority rights were de facto logically prior and morally superior to the principle of sovereignty, he wrote.

During the past 15 years, Hungary has become the principal target of the EU bureaucracy and the anti-sovereignist network of globalist NGOs.

One of the objectives of this network was to cultivate the emergence of local partners who could articulate their politics through the medium of a local dialect. In this way, the hostility towards the sense of nationhood that characterized the outlook of the EU oligarchy came to be refracted through Hungarian domestic politics. In the aftermath of the overthrow of the Communist regime, those in leftist and liberal political circles sought to consolidate their authority by developing a close special relationship with the West. They used their informal alliance with Western institutions and their representatives to promote the claim that they were best placed to promote the interest of Hungary in a globalized world,” Füredi emphasized in his opinion piece.

He argued that the connection of the Hungarian left to Western transnational institutions, NGOs, and the EU oligarchy had the effect of weakening its  capacity to engage with the problems facing the people of Hungary. He continued by saying that the lack of success of the Hungarian liberal left and their NGO allies became all too evident in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States in 2016.

“Writing in The Washington Post, Miklos Haraszti, the former Hungarian dissident and opponent of the Fidesz government, warned his American readers, ‘I watched a populist leader rise in my country,’ and added that, ‘that’s why I’m genuinely worried about America.’ Describing Hungary as a ‘populist autocracy,’ Haraszti warned that the election of Donald Trump threatened to drag America down the same illiberal democratic path,” Mr. Füredi recalled. He added that typically, populism is depicted as authoritarian, anti-democratic, and even racist. Still, since 2016, the patriotic movement has been increasingly gaining strength, which is why they are coming for Hungary, the director stressed. He recalled that last week, a commentary was published in Politico titled ‘How to confront Orbán and save the EU.’

The authors of this article go to great lengths to explain how Hungary can be sanctioned and deprived of its right to vote in the European Council.

Sanctioning Hungary and depriving it of its vote is of course a first step to forcing this nation to change its government. If that does not work, they will conspire to get rid of Hungary through manipulating the rule book,” Füredi stated. He concluded his article by pointing out that no doubt the patriotic forces in Europe possess sufficient strength to thwart the designs of the EU-NGO complex and prevent the plot against Hungary coming to a successful conclusion. “But this will not be an easy task. Which is why my team at MCC- Brussels is thoroughly committed to this fight.”

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