On 21 November, the leader of the Fidesz parliamentary group submitted the bill that is supposed to protect "national sovereignty".
The ruling party's "sovereignty protection plans" were compared to the Russian Foreign Agents Law even before the bill was presented. Now we have the draft of the Hungarian Act, so we can compare it with the Russian legislation in four aspects:
We will examine these aspects by comparing the current Russian law on foreign agents with the currently available draft of the Hungarian Act on the protection of national sovereignty.
Fidesz MPs at the parliamentary debate on the sovereignty protection bill on 28 November 2023. Photo by Dániel Németh/444
both classify foreign-funded organizations (NGOs, political parties, etc.) that are involved in public life as a risk and punish them for their activities to varying degrees.
However, the legal framework is only partially similar, and the internal logic of the Russian law and the Hungarian draft law are substantially different.
The Hungarian draft law contains 2 pillars:
Russian law regulates the compilation and updating of a list, a register of "foreign agents" operating on Russian territory. It also imposes many restrictions on the rights of the organizations and individuals on the list who are registered as foreign agents.
Under the Foreign Agents Law, NGOs receiving foreign funding in Russia must register as "foreign agents", even if the foreign funding is not used for political activities. This is because the state does not determine whether an organization is engaged in political activities based on the objectives set out in its statutes, but based on whether it is involved in organizing "political activities" aimed at influencing public opinion on government policy. Nor does the law specify what percentage of a "foreign agent's" income must come from foreign sources.
In any case, the Russian legislation and the Hungarian draft law are similar in that the state body empowered to do so can, in essence, arbitrarily label certain actors: in Russia, it can decide who is a foreign agent, and in Hungary, it can decide who to investigate for allegedly endangering the country's sovereignty.
However, an important difference is that while the Russian law describes in detail which organizations or individuals carrying out activities fall under the scope of the law, the Hungarian draft only refers explicitly to politicians who are candidates in elections and the NGOs nominating them. A three-year prison sentence can be imposed for accepting illicit foreign funding.
However, it is not clear which foreign-funded organizations fall under the jurisdiction of the Office for the Protection of Sovereignty and against whom the Office can investigate.
According to the text of the draft, organizations that "engage in or support activities aimed at influencing the will of voters by using foreign funding" or that "influence the outcome of elections".
However, this leaves a very wide margin for interpretation, as the officials can investigate practically anyone whose activities they consider to be influenced.
Fidesz MPs have also been contradictory about the organizations that may be affected by the work of the Office for the Protection of Sovereignty. Following the lead of Máté Kocsis, leader of the governing coalition's parliamentary faction who said at the introduction of the bill that they would like to make life more difficult for "left-wing journalists", "pseudo-civilians" and "dollar politicians". Meanwhile, Gergely Gulyás, Minister of the Prime Minister's Office stated that the law would not affect the press, only to clarify two days later that the newly established authority could certainly investigate the press, but would not have the right to sanction it.
But what is the framework for investigating foreign-supported organizations in Russian law and the Hungarian draft law?
According to the Hungarian draft law, the Office for the Protection of Sovereignty will, among other activities, seek to identify and investigate any
conducted in Hungary on behalf of another state, foreign body, or organization.
During the investigations, the Office may request information and data from the organization, which must be provided within 15 days. So the Office may have access to "all the data which may be relevant to the case in question", which is available only to the organization investigated and the organization concerned.
Thus, the Office may have access to "all the data" relating to the case in question, which is only available to the organization investigated and the organization concerned. They can inspect and request copies of all such documents, including those stored electronically. The same applies to public or municipal bodies which may hold data relating to the case in question. If it considers it necessary, the Office may also ask for written and oral information from any member of the staff of the investigated organization and from "the public or local authority concerned".
In addition, according to the draft the Office may address "requests for information" to the National Information Centre, which manages the work of the national security services and assists the work of the Office for the Protection of Sovereignty. The text also leaves the possibility open that this "request for information" could be met by the National Information Centre with the help of the national security services, using intelligence means.
If the investigative body does not cooperate with the Office for the Protection of Sovereignty, this could have two consequences:
The investigation procedure of the Office does not constitute an administrative authority procedure so no administrative lawsuit can be brought against the Office in connection with the investigative procedure.
With this provision, the subjects of future investigations are not allowed to appeal to the courts in the event of any alleged abuse.
Under the Russian law, the Ministry of Justice, which is responsible for the operation of the Foreign Agents Register, may investigate the persons concerned in the following cases:
In the course of the investigation, the authorities may also carry out announced raids, during which the organization concerned is obliged to cooperate and provide information. The authorities may also request information from banks and tax authorities to verify compliance with the Foreign Agents Law.
We have found some differences and one similarity between the two laws.
The Russian law differs from the Hungarian draft in that it describes in detail how exactly the authorities will investigate the activities of actors labeled as foreign agents: when and how often they can conduct a notified investigation and what may justify unannounced investigations and raids.
However, in both countries, the entities concerned are obliged to provide information and the authority or agency can request information from the state or local government bodies holding the relevant data in the same way.
Russian law goes beyond this and requires non-state actors, such as banks, to provide data. There is nothing similar in the Hungarian legislation.
On the front page: Vladimir Putin with Viktor Orbán in the Parliament during the visit of the Russian President, 2 February 2017. Viktor Orbán on Facebook.
Russian law provides uniform rules for anyone labeled as a foreign agent.
In addition to the difficulties of stigmatization and administrative burdens, the law restricts the activities of organizations and individuals labeled as foreign agents in several ways.
Persons designated as foreign agents:
Organizations that do not comply with the above rules may be prosecuted by the courts.
The Hungarian draft distinguishes between organizations that participate in elections and those that are simply involved in public life in some other way.
Organizations and individuals who do not declare that they do not receive any foreign funding for their electoral activities would not be registered as nominating organizations or candidates.
Those who do run but still receive foreign funding would face a penalty of 3 years in prison since this is considered to be an illegal influence on the electorate based on the new amendment of the Penal Code.
Such offenders could then be stripped of their public benefit status by the courts and lose the possibility of receiving tax donations, an important source of funding for NGOs and other civil organizations.
Anyone convicted of illegally influencing the will of voters is also banned by law from being "a responsible person in any NGO and a leading official in any political party."
In the case of organizations that do not stand for elections but "engage in activities aimed at influencing the will of the electorate by using foreign funding", the law does not provide for any criminal sanctions and, as Gergely Gulyás Minister of Prime Minister's Office stressed, the Office for the Protection of Sovereignty "has no sanctioning power". These organizations can expect the following:
Although these actions are not criminal sanctions, their potential impact should not be underestimated. A staff member of Meduza, an independent Russian online news portal now operating entirely from exile, told how being branded a foreign agent by the authorities pulled the rug out from under them overnight. The decision almost bankrupted the paper: although there was no law against doing business with them, their former advertisers were driven away.
In 2023, Meduza's situation was made even more difficult: in addition to the foreign agent stigma, the paper was also classified as an undesirable organization. Any cooperation with such organizations is forbidden, even sharing their articles is a potential risk.
Translated by Benedek Totth
