A right-wing columnist, implicitly criticizing the Prime Minister’s March 15th speech, warns against harsh anti-EU rhetoric, and welcomes the more pragmatic approach which the PM usually employs towards foreign investors.
A right-wing columnist accuses the European left of attacking the Hungarian government in order to restore the credibility of their battered ideological fellows within Hungary. A left-wing analyst, on the other hand, finds that Western criticism is only aimed at defending basic European values. READ MORE
Rumours about an abandoned Western plan to topple Hungary’s prime minister are interpreted by a leading right-wing commentator as proof that what liberals and left-wingers have always dismissed as radical, paranoid conspiracy theories, were actually true. READ MORE
Commentators seem to agree that Hungarians in Slovakia are among the losers of the Parliamentary election there. Some blame what they call the Orbán government’s wrong-headed cross-border policies; others believe the new inter-ethnic party is at fault. READ MORE
Left-wing commentators are appalled by PM Orbán’s new slogan: “We will not be a colony.” Their right-wing counterparts welcome the presence of the Prime Minister’s Polish supporters at the celebrations on the anniversary of the 1848 Hungarian revolution. READ MORE
Turnout was low at the first anti-government demonstration of the spring season. Népszabadság regrets the absence of young participants; Magyar Hírlap believes the left wing opposition finds it easier to gather support abroad than at home. READ MORE
Commenting on the European Commission’s decision to launch infringement procedures against Hungary, left-wing columnists believe that Brussels took a moral stand, while their conservative counterparts interpret the Commission’s decision as an example of the EU’s double standards. READ MORE
A left-wing commentator believes that Ákos Kertész, a Hungarian writer who has bitterly criticised Hungary and its right-wing parties, had to leave the country as a result of fierce verbal and physical attacks from the right-wing. He predicts that Kertész’s decision will be celebrated both by the governing centre-right parties and by radical groups. A pro-government commentator regrets Kertész’s decision, and hopes that he will find peace in Canada. READ MORE
Magyar Hírlap carries a debate on whether leaving the European Union is a realistic option for Hungary, while Magyar Nemzet, which also echoes the displeasure of right-wing circles with the threat of Union sanctions against Hungary, asks if the EU can be successful without respecting national traditions. READ MORE
The two main pro-government dailies fully expected that the European Commission would propose sanctions against Hungary, and argue that such a decision would be unjustified. READ MORE