“Developments in human rights, democracy and rule of law principles in Hungary are worrying,” we learn from a report published on Wednesday by Sweden’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the lengthy, 23-page-long biannual report, our friends at the Swedish MFA almost exclusively cite negative findings about the current state of – inter alia - Hungarian rule of law, media freedom, judiciary, elections, corruption and NGOs.
Nothing surprising here, nothing we haven’t seen before from critics who rely entirely on sources like Transparency International and the World Justice Project, or other sworn enemies of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s governments in the international arena. I’ll give the author some credit: Had I only considered the views and rankings of these biased, liberal organizations, and had I known virtually nothing about what’s actually happening in Hungary, maybe I too would have been duped.
But as I have noted in countering similar allegations countless times before, it’s not the slanted content of the report that’s disturbing, but the shameless hypocrisy behind it. A couple of examples:
According to the Swedish report, Hungarian elections are “free, but not fair,” but they forget to mention that next year’s election in Sweden will be the first time they’ve had a national election that properly satisfies the fundamental democratic right of voters to cast a secret ballot. Until the 2019 European Parliamentary elections, Swedes had to pick up the desired ballot in a public space outside the voting booth, making it easy for others to see who they voted for. The 2019 law that prescribes the proper placement of ballots is the result of repeated criticism from international organizations such as OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. Hungary has had a secret ballot for, gosh, decades, but whatever. Congratulations to the voters of Sweden!
When it comes to the state of Hungary’s judiciary, the Swedish MFA’s report rings the alarm bell about a “decline in judicial freedom” and the “politicization of higher courts.”
Judges in Sweden? They’re directly appointed by the Swedish government, upon the recommendation of the Judges Proposals Board (Domarnämnden). The government, by the way, nominates seven members of the nine-strong committee. Why aren’t the “independent” watchdogs barking about that?
What’s more, in first- and second-degree judicial procedures, judges are accompanied by two lay judges who are delegated by the political parties. In the Swedish system, it is therefore possible that the judge’s professional legal standpoint gets voted down by the political appointees. Some may recall the case that gained notoriety a few years back, when the lay judges applied Sharia Law in a Muslim family law dispute…
“The situation regarding media freedom is worrying,” the Swedish MFA writes about Hungary, arguing that one of the biggest problems with our press freedom is the concentration of media ownership. I’ve said many times on this blog and elsewhere that Hungary’s press freedom remains safe and sound, including media outlets that reach large audiences with coverage very critical of the government. But it seems that our friends in Stockholm need a bit of a reminder about where to look if they want to find a real example of concentrated media ownership.
Based on data from 2018, the Swedish Bonnier and the Norwegian Schibsted conglomerates had a combined market share of more than 48 percent when aggregating the publishing volumes of Sweden’s top 10 dailies. Furthermore, 6 out of the 7 most influential papers in Sweden belong to these two conglomerates, with the only exception being the local Göteborgs-Posten.
Meanwhile, TV4, the most popular commercial broadcaster that was previously also owned by Bonnier was acquired by telecommunications firm Telia, whose biggest shareholder (almost 40 percent) is the Swedish state. This means that on top of popular public channels SVT1 and SVT2, the state also controls the most significant commercial channel. Remarkable, no?
Some might even say that the situation regarding media freedom in Sweden is “worrying.”