A project leader of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (TASZ) sponsored by George Soros stated that the various NGOs can maintain their operations in Hungary in perfect safety. According to Márton Asbóth, TASZ therefore never devised a detailed plan B for the event that the government should want to close down such organisations.
He reassured his unknown interviewer that NGOs need not be concerned about harassment by the state. “And so, in terms of what we should maybe prepare ourselves for, what we should take into consideration, is there anything they can actually do to, for instance, stop funding, or to stop the day-to-day operations, is there at all something that they could legally do?” Asbóth was asked. He said:
No, I don’t think so. Actually, there were no scenes, you know, like police officers coming to you in NGO offices or freezing bank accounts. So, the very Russian situation has never happened before in Hungary, and I trust it wouldn’t.
Yesterday, we cited a part of the Skype interview in which he said the international press misrepresents the situation in Hungary, and in this context Mr Asbóth pointed out that while according to foreign media reports there are authoritarian regimes in power in Hungary and Poland, in his view both countries are great places to live in.
Kristóf Zoltán Varga, who previously worked as the Budapest director of the Open Society Foundations, also confirmed that NGOs can operate safely in Hungary, and reassured his interviewer that funds coming from abroad, too, safely reach these organisations.
We are members of the EU, and so it would be difficult for the government to stop funding [coming from abroad]. As the funding comes from abroad, they can’t stop the money from arriving via certain channels; at most, they might be able to obstruct the functioning of the channels themselves,
he stated.
A civilised place
Dalibor Rohac, a senior researcher of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) said Hungary is a perfectly safe place for foreign investors as well. In his view, the media attention focused on Hungary in the international press does not mean that business actors should have anything to worry about as regards the safety of private property, corruption or the legal environment.