A pro-government columnist describes Gordon Bajnai’s visit to Transylvania as phoney and hypocritical. A Transylvanian news site, on the other hand, suggests Bajnai did not go to chase after votes but to listen to what Hungarians living in Romania had to tell him. READ MORE
Tags: Bajnai, Transylvania
An opposition daily welcomes Croatia’s EU membership as a stabilizing factor in the Balkans, while a liberal commentator warns that Croatia may prove unable to defend its producers from German and Austrian competitors. READ MORE
Tags: diplomacy, Serbia, War crimes
The Bratislava-based Hungarian daily warns that the relatively high abortion figures in the southern districts of Slovakia may indicate a deep moral crisis among ethnic Hungarians. READ MORE
A leading liberal expert describes the vote in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe as “a victory for Orbán, albeit a tiny one”. READ MORE
Tags: constitution, Council of Europe
A left-wing commentator finds it ironic that in the pan-European institution the Hungarian government should have been saved from humiliation by Moscow. According to his pro-government counterpart, the match ended in a draw, but the tug of war continues. READ MORE
Tags: constitution, Council of Europe, EU
An independent conservative commentator condemns the organiser of an informal left-liberal meeting for expelling two critical journalists and suggests that the left-liberal élite represented there is doomed to failure. Népszabadság believes, however that such people are the only team who stand a chance of defeating the governing right wing at the next elections. READ MORE
Tags: Bajnai, Konrád, Mesterházy
Right-wing columnists continue to express disdain for far-right MPs who occupied the Speaker’s rostrum and repeatedly chanted the word “traitors,” while Parliament was voting on the new Land Act on Friday 21 June. A left-wing commentator calls for an immediate tax on leased arable land. READ MORE
Left-wing columnists fear further austerity measures. A pro-government pundit notes that although the excessive deficit procedure has been lifted, the government should not expect an end to criticism from the EU. A conservative commentator, on the other hand, hopes that Fidesz will call a truce with the EU. READ MORE
Commenting on the noisy occupation of the Speaker’s rostrum staged by right-wing radical MPs in Parliament, a pro-government columnist compares Jobbik to the Jacobins who plunged Paris into a spiral of terror during their rule. A centrist analyst predicts a series of similar spectacular acts as the elections get closer. READ MORE