Ukraine, which no longer holds elections, is ahead of Hungary in terms of democracy, according to a major German media group index that references 10 experts, nine of whom are directly funded by billionaire oligarch George Soros and his Open Society Foundations.
The results were produced by the German Bertelsmann Foundation’s democracy index, which was published in the print edition of the media group’s Frankfurter Allurement Zeitung,
Despite Hungary having a functioning and vibrant democracy that includes actual elections, the index claims that the country is less democratic than Ukraine, which is under martial law, has banned opposition parties, and has no elections.
According to the paper’s analyst, the new EU member states have made huge political and economic progress since 2004, with only Poland and Hungary representing or still representing a “politically authoritarian tendency.”
“Despite the country’s EU membership, Fidesz, led by Viktor Orbán and in power since 2010, has seriously undermined Hungary’s initially well-functioning democracy,” claims Ralph M. Wrobel, who argues that without pressure from Brussels, Poland and Hungary would have become fully authoritarian states.
It is worth noting, however, that the Bertelsmann Foundation’s biannual ranking is based on the opinions of country experts, not on facts.
“Nine of the ten ‘independent experts on Hungary’ are from Political Capital. Political Capital, founded by a former SZDSZ member, which received contracts worth hundreds of millions of forints from the previous Socialist governments of Ferenc Gyurcsány and Gordon Bajnai for communications consultancy, and of course among its supporters we find the Open Society Foundations led by George Soros,” government spokesman Zoltán Kovács pointed out earlier.
Kovács added that the Bertelsmann Group is the owner of RTL Television, among others. In a previous analysis, Hungarian news portal Mandiner pointed out that the group had woven its way into the EU institutions by hiding behind pro-Europeanism.
