The spectre of Viktor Orbán is haunting the world beyond the EU’s borders. Viktor Orbán’s vision for Europe, and his methods for consolidating his rule in Hungary, are now being copied in Israel by the new Netanyahu government in its attempt to carry out a judicial ‘reform’ which many see as a legal coup.
Democracy is more than elections from time to time where the winner takes all. These governments are pushing to change the substance of democracy and undermine the rule of law. Hungary is a member of the EU, but the EU legal and financial safeguards have failed to to put the brakes on the ongoing destruction of Hungarian democracy. Outside EU membership, Israel has even fewer safeguards to preserve its democracy.
Ever the survivalist, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cobbled together an extremist coalition of parties to form his sixth government in Israel, and which took power in January 2023. Netanyahu has long proven himself to be a ruthlessly skilled politician who will stop at nothing to maintain power and put to a stop to his ongoing trial for alleged corruption and fraud.
No one would have expected any less of him than to forge a coalition with a multitude of ultra-nationalist, far-right, and ultra-orthodox parties for him to regain his position as Prime Minister. But what has surprised many is the lightning-bolt package of proposed judicial and administrative ‘reforms’ suddenly on the table. In Hungary it took years to erode democracy, but Viktor Orbán’s mode of operating has its fingerprints all over these ‘reforms.’
First, there is the timing of shockingly swift reforms aimed at dramatically restructuring judicial autonomy and the very fabric of democratic governance. The Orbán government has done this repeatedly in Hungary since 2010. The Israeli public has responded with mass demonstrations in recent weeks.
So far demonstrations do not appear to be slowing down Netanyahu’s Orbánite strategies. But Israeli civil society is resilient, with a robust activism that should be the envy of many. There is still hope if the demonstrations will continue and grow in strength.
Second is the media and communications strategy which has accompanied these reforms. Like Orbán’s rhetoric in Hungary, Netanyahu and fellow ministers are translating these fundamental reforms into the simplistic populist language of the government effecting the will of the people.
Taken from the Orbán code of conduct
Third, and most crucially, is the substance of the proposed reforms.
The Netanyahu government has proposed to reduce the autonomy of the Supreme Court by increasing direct government control over nominations to the Supreme Court. Another proposal intends to reduce the power of the Supreme Court by allowing the Knesset to strike down some Supreme Court decisions by a simply parliamentary majority. These are disturbing reforms taken straight from the Orbán code of conduct, which since 2011 has steadily eroded the autonomy of courts and separation of powers in Hungary.
And, Netanyahu is now taking cues from Orbánism’s merger between religious conservatism, the hollowing out of meaningful democratic politics, and faith in pro-market capitalism. In Hungary’s case this triple alliance has damaged the economy, foreign investments, and scientific research. The same is likely to happen in Israel.
The European Commission has been notoriously slow in responding to these manoeuvres. After considerable pressure following a damning report on the rule of law in Hungary, the Commission finally determined in late 2022 that Hungary would not receive billions of EU cohesion and recovery funds unless 17 conditions were met improving rule of law.
But as is typical for the Commission, setting conditions for receipt of EU funds has hinged on defining infractions to rule of law as a risk to the soundness of the EU’s financial budget. Most European actions aimed at slowing down Viktor Orbán’s destruction of Hungarian democracy pivot on Orbán’s infractions of trade law, or on the detrimental impact on the EU’s budget.
For example, much of the 2020 judgement by the European Court of Justice regarding Hungary’s 2017 “Lex CEU,” focused mostly on trade law. The 2017 law passed by the Hungarian parliament forced my employer, the Central European University, out of Hungary. While the judgement determined that Lex CEU had also been a violation of academic freedom, the majority of the judgement is dedicated to establishing that Hungary had violated the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).
Defending free trade and sound budgets will not save democracy. A fundamental challenge to the EU project is that it was born from the ashes of twentieth century totalitarianism, premised on faith that free trade and economic cooperation would be a path towards peace and prosperity.
Legal coup within Europe
But the new authoritarianism works within market society, not against it.
Orbán and his Fidesz party have orchestrated a legal coup within Europe by showing how a government can implement a simulacrum of parliamentary democracy, while remaining faithful to the founding principles of the internal market. It is a mistake to see Orbánism as emerging against the EU. His regime is a product of it, a twenty-first century authoritarianism removed from political violence, and which calibrates the margins within which it can be a member of a borderless market while also concentrating power.
The global powers which initially looked to be the winners of the Cold War are not prepared for this new authoritarianism. Netanyahu, like Orbán, is no longer monogamous in his loyalties to more powerful actors. Hungary unapologetically engages in strategic ties with Russia and China. Similarly, Netanyahu has enabled increased Chinese presence in Israel to the chagrin of the Biden administration, despite decades of close strategic ties between the US and Israel.
The changes are deep and will be long-lasting. Just as young Israeli Jews have mostly grown up within an Israel made in Netanyahu’s image, and accustomed to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, young Hungarians who are now entering adolescence have only ever learned from Orbán-endorsed textbooks. We will feel the effects of this generation for decades to come.
Protecting principles of free trade does not imbue the EU with a deep moral or political purpose. Nor does it inoculate Europeans against the new conservative and pro-capitalist authoritarianism. Europe, and especially the Commission, can and must unflinchingly face that we are no longer in the twentieth century. If it fails to do so, many of us will find ourselves in a Europe – and a world – made in Orbán’s image.
