Hungary
Viktor Orbán has played a perfect game with Putin
On 3 April Hungarians will have their ninth set of free parliamentary elections since the collapse of the communist dictatorship…
The EU is pushing Hungary and Poland to the brink
Storm clouds looming over the EU’s ‘rule of law’ dispute turned a shade darker on Wednesday. The European Court of…
Is Orbán serious about leaving the EU?
First the UK decided to leave the EU. Then in Poland, lawmakers started talking about it. Is Hungary now seriously…
Could Viktor Orbán be a peacemaker in Ukraine?
For a politician whose calling card is the struggle for Hungarian national sovereignty, Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin’s press conference…
Viktor Orbán or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Putin
Viktor Orbán first came to prominence when in 1989 he declared on live TV that Hungary must put an end…
Why Viktor Orbán is fighting a war against ‘LGBT ideology’
‘Do you support the unrestricted presentation of sexual media content that influences the development of underage children?’ In a national…
The EU doesn’t understand Hungary and Poland
Rather like Germany with its ill-starred ‘Drive to the East’ in the 19th and 20th centuries, one suspects the EU…
Out of nowhere
Will Hungary’s surprise opposition leader out-Orbán Orbán?
How will Europe respond to a wave of Afghan refugees?
On Tuesday, Franek Sterczewski made a break for the border. Wearing a long trench coat and carrying a blue plastic…
Fortress Europe is dreading the Afghan migrant crisis
Fortress Europe is pulling up the drawbridge. The takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban is likely to being about a…
Hungary, Poland and the EU’s ‘diversity’ problem
It is quite something when the self-proclaimed ‘illiberal’ prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, reminds Brussels of its liberal principles.…
So near and yet so strange
This pleasant volume, the author announces in the introduction, is ‘not a nature book, or even a travel book, so…
Viktor Orbán goes to war on the European parliament
‘Times have changed, and whereas thirty years ago we believed Europe was our future, today we understand that we are…
Euros 2021: England are easily the most boring side in the tournament
England 0 Scotland 0 Hungary 1 (Fiola) France 1 (Griezmann) The wonderful Hungarians almost took my mind off England’s lamentable…
Is the EU breaching its UK treaty by failing to protect LGBT rights?
Has the EU Commission lost any sense of moral value? This week, Hungary, an EU member state, voted to impose…
He loves me, he loves me not
The premise for the unsnappily titled Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time is this: a Hungarian…
The growing alliance between Central Europe and Israel
In 2018, the Czech President Miloš Zeman promised in a speech on the 70th anniversary of the founding of Israel…
Vaccines are testing Central Europe’s loyalties to the EU
In a fresh embarrassment for the EU in its vaccine rollout, breakaway member Hungary is now at the top of…
Hungary’s vaccine strategy risks showing up the EU
You have to admire Hungary’s chutzpah. Not only has it bypassed Brussels to pursue its own vaccine procurement strategy, it…
Franco-Hungarian empire
The unlikely alliance of Orban and Macron
The Visegrád bloc are threatening to tear apart the EU
The bad boys of Europe are at it again. The EU has been attempting to tie budget funds to members…
Raiding the sonic store cupboard
There’s a certain merit in bluntness. ‘Quarantine Soirées’ was what the Budapest Festival Orchestra called its response to the crisis,…
Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming is a long, hard slog
The Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, who sounds like a sneeze and reads like a fever, is on a mission to…
One of the last living avant-gardists speaks – Gyorgy Kurtag on his new Beckett opera
Arriving in Budapest, I receive a summons I cannot refuse. Gyorgy Kurtag wants to see me. Famously elusive, the last…
Put your trust in Hungarian wine (yes, really)
The wines of Tokaji run like a golden thread through Hungarian history. There are references to their nectar-like quality in…
