The controversial state of emergency adopted in Hungary to fight the new coronavirus should be lifted at the end of May, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday accused of taking advantage of the pandemic to strengthen his power.
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"We expect the government to be able to return to Parliament the special powers it received because of the pandemic at the end of May," said Viktor Orban during an official visit to Serbia , a border country. Emergency legislation passed on March 30 gave the nationalist prime minister the power to govern by decree until his cabinet declared the end of the pandemic.
At national and European level, many voices have been raised, accusing Viktor Orban of taking advantage of the crisis to weaken democracy in Hungary, a member country of the European Union where the rule of law has already been weakened by the ten years of power of the sovereignist Prime Minister.
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Under a new offense also introduced in late March, Hungarians were also arrested by the police for criticizing on social networks the management of the pandemic by the public authorities. Thursday, the European Commission hoped that Hungary, targeted since September 2018 by a procedure for alleged violations of the founding values of the EU, "return to the club of undeniably democratic countries".
Since his return to power in 2010, Viktor Orban has been regularly pinned by international organizations for his authoritarianism. Last week, the American NGO Freedom House removed its country from the list of democratic states and classified it as that of "hybrid regimes".
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Budapest has vigorously rejected the criticism and has always said that the state of emergency will be lifted as soon as the pandemic ends. "This special legal order that we have established in Hungary has enabled the government and its leader to quickly take serious and difficult decisions due to the epidemic," said Viktor Orban during a joint press conference with the president. Serbian Aleksandar Vucic Friday. "Everyone will soon have the opportunity to apologize to Hungary for the unfounded accusations made against him," added the leader.
