The European Union is engaged in a silent war to regulate language, warns the institute.Continue reading
A group of 85 media outlets have recently signed a petition demanding the EU to crackdown on Hungary because of its new law on transparency, one they call the “discrediting” law. The editorial teams of Hungary Today and Ungarn Heute wish to distance themselves from this new coordinated attempt to hinder transparency of funding among well-known activist media and NGOs under the banner of “freedom of speech” and the “freedom of press.” In our assessment, the petition is nothing else but part of a thinly veiled campaign on behalf of Hungary’s left-wing opposition.
The petition, signed by 85 editors-in-chiefs from 22 European countries, complains about the new law as restricting media freedoms and that of the civil sector under haphazard criteria. They also criticize the powers granted to the Sovereignty Protection Office (SPO) to publish the names of NGOs and media that are suspected of being actors of foreign interests that represent a threat to national security. They criticize the head of the SPO for his alleged bias favoring conservative forces in Hungary while failing to explain as where should the leadership of an institution be drawn when the other side, represented in the signature field, has attacked the notion of national sovereignty for years as an obsolete concept to be replaced by open societies and a global identity. The signatories of the petition openly also attack Hungary’s Prime Minister, which finally unveils the entire initiative as a political defamation campaign proceeding along well-rehearsed lines.
In fact, the new transparency law is a logical and necessary consequence of the scandals of years past, when foreign actors have poured enormous sums into Hungary’s underfunded media and political landscape in order to tilt them towards serving their ideological and commercial interests. Billions from U.S. oligarch George Soros financing radical liberal voices, millions of dollars spent during the election campaign of the united opposition by the shady Action for Democracy group, millions in USAID and Internews money pouring in to the network of far-left activist NGOs, and their media mouth-pieces openly in revolt against the majority will of the Hungarian electorate expressed in free and democratic election. While most of the money can be tied to interests close to the U.S. Democrats, let us not forget the EUR 649 million spent by the EU on its propaganda campaigns silencing opinions contrary to its interests, muffling dissent by labeling conservative and national voices as “disinformation” or hate-speech.
New report exposes the EU’s covert €649 million propaganda campaign against free speech.
MCC Brussels reveals the European Commission is funding a vast network to suppress dissent under the guise of fighting “hate speech” & “disinformation”.
THREAD pic.twitter.com/zlsYSu2MEM
— MCC Brussels (@MCC_Brussels) May 20, 2025
Among the signatories of the petition one can identify the European who-is-who of George Soros funded or owned press, and those who have been acutely affected by President Donald Trump’s crack-down on USAID and similar taxpayer funded covert foreign funding for NGOs and media. In fact, this is precisely what the new law aims to highlight, namely that “over the past decades, an unregulated political grey area has gradually developed, in which activist networks, mostly maintained by foreign interests and foreign funding, operate. These organizations carry out political activity under the guise of the right of association or freedom of enterprise, without being subject to the funding restrictions and prohibitions that apply to political parties. These activities constitute a serious threat to national sovereignty, against which the state has a duty to act.”
As our editorial team is partly staffed by members of the Hungarian minority from surrounding countries, we find it especially hurtful that the petition was signed by some of the editors of Hungarian minority newspapers, who have been, and in many cases still are, funded by money from the Hungarian taxpayers, or national funds in their own country meant to support minority culture. This is a blatant relinquishment of their duties to use these resources to strengthen the national identity and unity of the Hungarian minority.
Couldn’t be happier that @POTUS, @JDVance & @elonmusk are finally taking down this corrupt foreign interference machine.
In Hungary, we’ve seen it all before:
€7.3M in illicit foreign funding funneled into the 2022 opposition campaign via Soros-backed ‘Action for Democracy.’… pic.twitter.com/HO5duhd9Oq— Balázs Orbán (@BalazsOrban_HU) February 3, 2025
In our assessment, the petition is just another attempt to use the European Union’s institutions to hinder efforts to clear up the foreign funding-scandals of recent years, during which enormous sums were spent on covert political actors in the media and civil sector actively trying to subvert the democratic will of the national electorate. Transparency, mandated by the new legislation, should be welcomed and celebrated. It is the raison d’etre of free press to serve democracies by serving their national community with clear and truthful reporting of facts. Foreign funding as such is no obstacle to this service, but readers must be made aware of its existence and its sources. They should be the ultimate arbiters of the trustworthiness of such sources of information, rather than the increasingly corrupt and biased European elites that have a vested interest of their own in keeping such funding hidden from public scrutiny.
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