Hungary’s EU minister accuses NGOs of undermining trust, questions funding transparency

In Hungary’s experience, NGOs formerly financed by the US were aiming to undermine trust in public institutions and to destabilise the political regime, János Bóka, the EU affairs minister, said in Brussels on Wednesday.

Bóka told Hungarian journalists that their funding now from EU resources had also lacked transparency. Support contracts concluded by the European Commission had not reached the level of transparency and publicity required by transparency regulations applying to member states, Bóka said. He vowed to request that instances be made public when the EC replaced the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as a financier.

Fidesz calls on the government to appoint a commissioner

The parliamentary group of ruling Fidesz has asked the government to appoint a commissioner to investigate US funds received by “sham” civil organisations, media outlets, activists and “political actors” in the past ten years, group leader Máté Kocsis said on Wednesday.

Calling from the parliamentary group’s session in Balatonfured, in western Hungary, Kocsis said the commissioner would be tasked with travelling to the United States to recover all relevant documents and to regularly brief the government on the data that will then be made public.