Soros foundation leaves, Hungarian Liberal flagship NGOs in a mess?

Alex Soros, the heir of the Soros empire, has decided to relocate the majority of their activities from the European Union. As a result, many Hungarian liberal NGOs and rights activists may find themselves in a difficult situation since they cannot hope for help from the conservative Orbán cabinet.

According to G7, a Hungarian economy news outlet, Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF) is to remove much of its support and activities from the European Union. Globally, they will lay off 40% of their employees. According to the organisation’s spokesman, they have already informed their Hungarian partners about the decision.

OSF will restructure its activity targeting East Europe and the Balkans, Africa and the Middle East. Among the victims are many EU organisations and programmes. Having said that, they will still continue to support some programmes, e.g. Roma projects, but most of their initiatives will be ceased. In 2018, they had already closed down their office in Budapest due to the harsh blows of the Orbán government and relocated it to Berlin. Now they will dismiss 80% of their employees from that bureau.

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OSF supports Hungarian programmes and NGOs with more than 2-3 billion forints (EUR 5,170,024-7,755,036) annually. In 2020, they distributed USD 6.8 million (HUF 2.4 billion – EUR 6,204,029) in Hungary. That is a large sum of money, and those organisations and programmes do not have good chances to receive national funds. The NGOs concerned are e.g. the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, TASZ, Political Capital, Rosa Parks Foundation and Transparency International Hungary. The list G7 made is not complete because OSF doesn’t share a register of the Hungarian organisations that received financial support. But the organisations on the top of the list were granted 2-2.3 million dollars in the last five years, which is a significant amount.

Orbán sceptic about Soros’s withdrawal: only when the last “soldier” leaves!

According to hvg.hu, the Soros foundations support independent Hungarian media outlets like Átlátszó, 444.hu and Direkt36. In the case of Átlátszó, the support is 20-30% of their annual budget. Between 2016 and 2021, more than 90 Hungarian NGOs and programmes received financial support from the Soros empire, including Orbán’s former István Bibó College. Balázs Orbán, the prime minister’s political director, said he would only believe in the “withdrawal of the occupying forces when the last Soros soldier left”.

Interestingly, the first Soros foundation was created in Hungary in 1984. However, George Soros intended to cease its operation in 2003 as he believed the foundation had accomplished its objectives. In the end, he decided otherwise. Political pressure increased after the 2015 migrant crisis when the Orbán cabinet called him public enemy nr 1 in Hungary who is responsible for the arrival of the hundreds of thousands of migrants aiming towards Germany and West Europe. Last December, George Soros passed OSF to his heir, Alex Soros, who made the decision to concentrate on non-EU countries.

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