While Europe and most of the world is locked in a desperate battle with a virus which has already claimed the lives of well over two and a half million people, Hungary has been waging a war against multiple adversaries. The coronavirus is just one of several targets.
Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has insisted that ‘[h]uman lives and health stand above politics’ and that ‘[i]t’s irresponsible to turn vaccines into a political issue’. Yet it’s hard to resist the conclusion that his administration’s handling of the pandemic has been shaped by political considerations as well as informed medical opinion.
Orbán has an acrimonious relationship with the European Union, which he routinely castigates for its purportedly liberal asylum policies, support for multiculturalism, failure to uphold ‘Christian’ values and federalist tendencies. To the dismay of the Netherlands and others, Orbán, along with the government of Mateusz Morawiecki in Poland, fought efforts by the EU to introduce meaningful sanctions for member countries which violate the rule of law.
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Hungary’s Covid-19 wars – Stephen Pogány
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