Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has received the green light from Parliament to extend the possibility of ruling by decree for another six months. The decision was justified by the extension of the state of emergency due to the war in Ukraine, extended until May 2025.
The decision will certainly not be well received in Brussels, where the excessive centralization of power in the hands of the Hungarian president has already caused several clashes. The EU has already suspended the disbursement of around 20 billion euros of funding intended for Hungary due to issues related to (non) respect for the rule of law in the country.
The ability of the prime minister to legislate by decree is common in all democracies at critical moments, but critics believe that the Hungarian leader is abusing this power, and in the past he had resorted to this mechanism to centralize power in his hands. In 2016 the emergency was identified in the migration crisis and in 2020 the same power was entrusted to him due to the pandemic.
Some NGOs, including Amnesty International, have said the state of emergency laws have been abused to erode the controls of other bodies and have little to do with the war in Ukraine.
In a sign of détente with the EU, however, yesterday (Monday 4 November) the Hungarian Parliament amended the legislation that had placed high-level politicians, including some of Orbán’s ministers, at the head of the foundations that govern public universities. The new changes prohibit high-level officials from taking on such roles and impose term limits on directors. The previous law had prompted the EU to suspend 21 Hungarian universities from the popular Erasmus programme, with consequences for thousands of Hungarians studying or wanting to study in another member state. Furthermore, university researchers had been excluded from EU-funded projects.
