Under Viktor Orbán’s rule, Hungary has changed very much for the worse: general frustration, impatience and hatred are mounting, trans rights activist Márton Vay, who now identifies him(her)self as Blanka, writes in German daily Tagesspiegel.
Vay, who once served as Greenpeace’s spokesperson and communications manager in Hungary and then founded the Green Party with four friends, which has been present in parliament for a long time.
She emigrated to Germany in 2017.
Although she has been living in Germany for a number of years, the article mentions several reasons why she is “angry” at Germany: the excessive presence of German car factories in Hungary, the large amount of financial support they received from the state, Audi’s factory construction in a nature conservation area, and Deutsche Telekom’s news portal openly supporting Orbán’s government.
(Editor’s note: formerly owned by Deutsche Telekom’s Hungarian subsidiary, since 2017 the news portal Origo is part of the portfolio of the privately-owned New Wave Media Group)
“The big German car companies have many factories in Hungary. BMW, Volkswagen and Mercedes are receiving a great deal of financial support from the Hungarian state. 45,000 euros in funding per job is not an isolated case. You pay so much “protection money” for a good reason. It is probably also because of Hungary’s pro-business policies that Viktor Orbán was supported by Angela Merkel and the German conservative members in the European Parliament for so long,” Vay writes.
According to Vay, perhaps people would be able to rebuild democracy and the rule of law in Hungary if Viktor Orbán did not receive regular support from Germany. She said the “virus of right-wing populism” was a threat to the whole of Europe, and that she felt she had to finally call attention to the phenomenon.
By her own account, when arriving to Germany, Vay received a monthly €670 in jobless support for several months and the German Labor Office paid €7,200 for her German language tuition.
