Hungary made it to one of Politico’s most-read articles

Politico.eu, one of the world’s most well-known political news sites published its list of the 20 most-read stories of 2020. An article about Hungary became sixth.

As it was already expected, coronavirus-related news took several places amongst the most-read articles: 15 out of 20 is connected to the pandemic. This means that only five non-coronavirus-related articles had a great reader audience – reports 444.

The most-read Politico articles that are non-coronavirus related were the following:

• 17. 9 things to know about Antony Blinken, the next US secretary of state
• 16. Brexit: What just happened (in September) and what comes next, explained
• 15. Brits in the EU to get common residence card
• 9. Merkel rebuffs Trump invitation to G7 summit
• 6. Hungary no longer a democracy: report

As you can see, the article about Hungary made it to the sixth position, which makes it one of Politico’s most-read non-coronavirus related article of the year.

As we have earlier reported, the article is about the NGO, Freedom House’s yearly report on the state of democracy in 29 countries, from Central Europe to Central Asia, including Hungary. From an earlier state “semi-consolidated democracy”, Hungary now got the status of a “hybrid regime”.

Hybrid regimes belong to the middle category. Following hybrid regimes, there are the semi-authoritarian countries (Armenia), and consolidated authoritarian countries (Russia and the once Soviet member states). In the other direction, there are the semi-consolidated (Poland, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria) and consolidated democracies (Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania).

According to the Freedom House, even though there are elections in hybrid regimes, on the other hand, the democratic institutions are fragile, and political, as well as civil liberties are being challenged.

The Freedom House report compared Hungary to Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, as well as to a part of the Balkan countries like Bosnia-Hercegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Albania, and Northern-Macedonia.

The earlier report also considered Hungary a semi-consolidated democracy, while in 2015 it belonged to the consolidated democratic countries. This means that Hungary in a short period, shifted back two categories which is unusual considering the reports that have been ongoing for 25 years.

Read alsoHungarian democracy ‘alive and well’ – The Washington Post

Source: Politico, 444