The national consultation on “Brussels sanctions” was launched by the Hungarian government: the questions were published on 14 October.
Over the past decade, the government consulted voters several times on different issues. However, these so-called national consultations used different techniques to steer respondents toward answers the government wished to see.
"Brussels leaders have decided to impose economic sanctions because of the war” → It was not faceless leaders in Brussels who made this decision, but the European Union member states who voted unanimously for the sanctions packages. Including the Hungarian government.
“It is now clear that the Brussels sanctions adopted in June are not working.” → Contrary to the Prime Minister's claim, several analyses have shown that sanctions are explicitly hurting Russia.
“Energy prices are soaring, food prices are rising and inflation has reached levels not seen for decades.” → Energy prices have not risen solely because of sanctions, nor can sanctions policy be solely responsible for the rise in food prices and inflation – prices were already rising in Hungary before the outbreak of war.
“Russia managed to increase its revenues” → Several analyses show that Russia's revenues are falling, while the Russian economy is also being hit by Western sanctions policies in other areas.
“Brussels, instead of changing its misguided decisions, is now expanding sanctions. This is irresponsible and will deepen economic problems.” → The Prime Minister is making a political statement – unsupported by data – and a prediction that cannot be verified.
“What is needed is not misguided sanctions but immediate peace talks.” → Classic argumentation technique: the false dilemma relies on presenting two options as if they can only be chosen on an either/or basis, and presenting the one he prefers positively. But sanctions and peace negotiations are not mutually exclusive.
“We condemn Russia's military aggression and help refugees from Ukraine.” → Although Viktor Orbán condemned “Russia's military action” on the day the war broke out, the Parliament only voted on a political declaration about it much later, on 10 March. In the meantime, the perception of the war in pro-government newspapers has gone from neutral to increasingly pro-Russian.
“Abolishing Brussels’ sanctions could end the rise of prices and would ease the burden on the economy” → This is also a prediction for which there is no data to prove.
“Sanctions also have a severe impact on food supplies. The gas price increases also have a major impact on the cost of agricultural production, and the sanctions apply to certain fertilizer ingredients. The increase in food prices in developing countries increases the risk of famine. This will lead to even greater migratory flows and increase pressure on Europe's borders. The final question of the consultation is: Do you agree with the sanctions that result in rising food prices?”
Photo by FERENC ISZA / AFP
It was already ruled in 2018 that the “STOP Soros” national consultation contained false and reputationally damaging allegations (the Helsinki Committee sued and won against the Prime Minister's Office). But this did not change the government’s practice: the new consultation is also based on false grounds. Hungary voted in favor of the previous sanctions so the result of the national consultation only has political and communicative significance. So, from a legal point of view neither the Hungarian government nor “Brussels” is bound by the results.
"The result of the national consultation is clear: the Hungarian people reject the Brussels’ sanctions!" – Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on his official Facebook page.
“The government summarised the results of the national consultation, which are clear: 97% of Hungarians refuse sanctions that would cause serious damage.” – says the Government Information Centre’s newsletter, but this is just a rhetorical turn of phrase.
Detailed results published by the Government Information Centre
The Government Information Centre shared the detailed results of the consultation, which showed that 1 million 389 thousand people participated in it. Between 96.3% and 97.6% of respondents answered “no” to the questions.
According to the data from the electoral register, there were 8,215,304 Hungarian citizens entitled to vote in the parliamentary elections in 2022, which means that around 16.5% of eligible voters answered “no” to the consultation questions.
That's roughly one in six voters. So the fact that the government summarises the outcome of the consultation as the opinion of the “Hungarian people” is just a rhetorical turn of phrase.
As we have seen, the Government Information Centre interpreted the results of the consultation as “97 percent of Hungarians refuse sanctions that cause serious economic damage”.
This was followed by a nationwide billboard campaign and widely distributed short videos. The script – “Hungarians have decided: 97 percent say NO to sanctions" – falsely suggests that the overwhelming majority of the Hungarian population rejects sanctions.
Billboard campaign on the consultation results (Photo: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP)
Lakmusz tried to find out, based on publicly available data and documents how much money the government spent on advertising the false results of the consultation. Although we have not yet been able to obtain an exact figure, it is worth presenting the techniques used by the government – the Prime Minister's Cabinet Office and Minister Antal Rogán – to keep the details of the communication budget and the spending secret.
A document published by the Prime Minister's Office on 13 January reveals that the technical costs (postage and printing costs) of running the national consultation on sanctions alone exceeded HUF 2.7 billion gross (€ 7 million).
There are two main sources of information for journalists on communication expenditure:
Communication tasks are allocated by the NKOH through a central procurement procedure. At certain intervals, a major procurement is launched and, as a result, a framework agreement is signed with one or more companies or groups of companies. The winner may carry out public communication tasks until the budget of the agreement is exhausted.
In practice, the public communication works have been won for some time by a consortium of two companies owned by Gyula Balásy, New Land Media Ltd. and Lounge Design Ltd.
The current HUF 75 billion net framework agreement was signed with Balásy's companies on 11 May 2022 by the Communications Office.
The framework agreement allows New Land and Lounge Design to carry out communication tasks for all ministries, all budgetary institutions under the control or supervision of the government and majority state-owned companies.
For certain communication works, state institutions and companies simply entrust Balásy's companies based on the framework agreement with the NKOH.
This procedure is also followed by the Prime Minister's Office for central government campaigns.
The latest list of contracts published by the Cabinet Office shows that contracts were entrusted to New Land and Lounge Design for HUF 3.42 billion (€ 8,7 million) on 20 October 2022 and HUF 1.26 billion (€ 3,2 million) on 7 December.
In the NKOH's procurement report for the fourth quarter of 2022, you can also see a contract for 11.81 billion (€ 30 million) between the Balásy companies and the Cabinet Office, signed on 15 December.
Although the documents have been published, at least belatedly, neither the text nor the summary reports of the NKOH reveal much about the actual subject matter of the contracts.
The contracts, written in a single template, do not reveal anything about what exactly the Cabinet Office wants to communicate, and the tasks to be carried out are only vaguely set out in the documents.
We learn, for example, that “creative concept development, creative copywriting and graphic design”, “online agency tasks” or “media planning and buying” can be carried out under the contracts.
The reason for the vague wording is that the Cabinet Office's communication contracts are not for specific tasks but are “framework contracts”.
Under the NKOH framework agreement, the Cabinet Office therefore concludes framework contracts with Balásy companies. However, the tasks to be carried out are not described in these contracts, but are communicated to the contractor by the issue of “individual purchase orders”.
The individual orders are not contracts, nor do they have to be entered in the public procurement database – so the public cannot know exactly what the Cabinet Office is spending the amounts set out in the framework contracts on.
In the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office, we had a look at how much money was spent on advertising the results of the 2022 national consultation.
In the first months of 2023, the government flooded the country with the message that 97% of Hungarians said no to EU sanctions against Russia in the last national consultation. Government posters proclaimed “Hungarians have decided: 97% NO to sanctions”, echoed by the anti-sanctions video ad.
Photo by Attila Kisbenedek/AFP
To get a clearer picture of this, we sent a public interest information request to the Cabinet Office responsible for government communications.
The Cabinet Office did not send us the requested documents but allowed us to “inspect” them in the building of the Ministry.
We did not have a chance to check all the media plans, which sometimes run to several hundred pages, in full detail on the spot, but we did find a few interesting facts about the so-called “results communication” of the consultation:
In our data request sent on 26 April, we asked for the performance documents of the framework contract worth HUF 11.81 billion + VAT (€ 30 million + 27%) that the Cabinet Office signed last December with two companies of Gyula Balásy, New Land Media Ltd. and Lounge Design Ltd.
In 2022, the combined turnover of New Land Media and Lounge Design was nearly HUF 100 billion (€ 254 million), and the two companies paid out almost HUF 10 billion (€ 25 million) in dividends, according to last year's balance sheets.
The subject of the framework contract concluded last December between the Cabinet Office and the Balásy companies was rather general: "to perform tasks related to government communication on the international and national scene concerning the future of Europe and to perform tasks related to government decisions of major importance to the lives of citizens."
The documents were not sent by e-mail by Antal Rogán's ministry, but could “inspect” them in the presence of two ministry staff at the Cabinet Office building. During the two-hour on-site inspection, it became clear that the Balásy companies' “professional reports” on their performance were usually available on CDs or USB sticks, but no copies could be made, and we were not allowed to bring a mobile phone or laptop into the room. They only let us take notes.
While the terms of reference for government communications contracts, which are publicly available, are completely generic, the specific tasks are determined by the Cabinet Office through the issuance of so-called individual orders. However, these are not made public.
The documents I consulted contained a total of 44 individual orders (for a gross amount of HUF 10,66 billion/€30 million), but only four of these were specifically related to the communication of the results of the consultation.
For these four orders, the government spent a total gross amount of HUF 5,09 billion (€13 million) according to the performance certificates.
Advertising costs amounted to almost 4.7 billion (€ 12 million) forints between 25 January and 28 February, to which 282 million forints (€ 700k) of print media advertising was added between 3 and 10 March.
The “sanction bomb” billboards. Photo by Ferenc Isza/AFP
The documents we have seen include the costs of the results campaign up to 28 February and 10 March for the printed press. However, street posters were certainly still out in April, which suggests that the nearly HUF 5.1 billion (€ 13 million) was not the final cost of the results campaign.
In the meantime, a new framework contract for HUF 7.87 billion + VAT (€20 million + 27%) was uploaded to the public procurement database and signed by the Cabinet Office with New Land and Lounge Design.
If there were any additional orders for the results campaign, they were probably paid from this new framework contract.
We sent a new request for information to the Cabinet Office, asking for the list of individual clients and the performance documents of the new framework contract.
Translated by Benedek Totth
