“Hungary is not moving eastwards from the Western bloc, but wants to remain a long-term mafia state on the periphery of the EU,” 444.hu writes in its summary of the CEU DI Working Paper authored by our researchers, Balint Madlovics and Balint Magyar.
“A criminal organization, whether private or public, has two basic functions. First, it tries to accumulate wealth for its members, which necessitates some source of money and the ability to launder it. Secondly, it needs to be able to ensure impunity for its members, thus deactivating control mechanisms such as law enforcement and prosecution which would prevent it from spending its accumulated wealth,” the review quotes the paper.
The authors examine how the Orban regime, which they call a patronal autocracy, runs a mafia state on the periphery of the EU, why opening up to the East is worth for the regime, how it frames all this at home and abroad, and how the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war affected all this.
Read the full summary (in Hungarian, subscription may be required) here.