Transparency bill may not go before parliament, state secretary says

Levente Magyar, State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said on Wednesday at the Hungarian Embassy in London that he was not sure whether the “transparency law” will ever be put before Parliament, after Máté Kocsis, leader of the Fidesz parliamentary group, recently announced that Parliament would certainly not vote on it before the summer break.

“There was a lot of controversy around the bill, and there was a lot of internal debate and discussion and dispute around the bill, so the initiators of the bill saw it appropriate to revoke it for now,” Levente Magyar told Reuters.

“I'm not sure it would ever re-emerge.”

he said, adding that the earliest the bill could return to parliament for debate is autumn. "I don't know about any determined decision to bring this back."

János Halász, a member of parliament representing Fidesz, tabled a bill entitled "On transparency in the public sphere," on 14 April, which is designed to make it extremely difficult for Hungarian organisations receiving funds from abroad to operate and exist. If the proposal is accepted, it means that if the Sovereignty Protection Office deems that the activities of a foreign-funded organisation threaten Hungary's sovereignty, it may recommend that the government place the organisation on a list.

Once on the list, the organization would no longer be able to collect 1 percent of tax donations (in Hungary it is possible to specifically allocate one percent of one’s personal income tax to certain organizations and causes of one’s choosing) and would be obligated to request a "fully conclusive private document" from all of its supporters and pertaining to all of its funding, stating that the money did not come from abroad. An amendment to the bill submitted later would strip the organisations on the government's list of the 1 percent tax donations already offered to them this year.

Earlier this month the Fidesz parliamentary group leader, Máté Kocsis said that they had received comments from the Hungarian Banking Association, the Hungarian Association of Advertising Agencies, the Presidential Palace, the Hungarian Bar Association, and the Hungarian Publishers Association that were worth considering so they postpone the debate on the bill until the autumn.

We previously explained why the bill, which is supposedly intended to increase transparency, is in fact a threat to democratic public discourse in Hungary. In addition to the articles linked above, we also wrote about the bill here, here and here.