Social Europe: Fewer Italians than Swedes hold anti-feminist views

Of the eight European countries included in the survey, which had 12,000 respondents, people in Italy were the least likely to blame feminism for men’s feelings of marginalisation and demonisation.

Meanwhile, in Sweden—long seen as a bastion of progressive gender-equality politics—more people (41 per cent) than anywhere else surveyed said they at least somewhat agreed with the statement: ‘It is feminism’s fault that some men feel at the margins of society and demonised.’

After Sweden, about 30 per cent of participants in Poland expressed anti-feminist views, followed by the United Kingdom (28 per cent), France (26 per cent), Hungary (22 per cent), Germany (19 per cent) and the Netherlands (15 per cent). Only 13 per cent of Italian respondents, however, expressed such views and 65 per cent said they either strongly or somewhat disagreed with them. [...]

According to the survey, the majority of respondents in Hungary hold negative views towards immigrants (60 per cent) and Muslim people (54 per cent). These numbers are about twice as high as they are in the UK, where 30 per cent hold such views of immigrants and 26 per cent of Muslims.

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Social Europe: Brexit and the misunderstanding of sovereignty

 From the start, Brexit was a quixotic project. Take the symbolic centrality of fishing—which makes up less than 0.1 per cent of the UK’s economy—to the negotiations over the future relations between the UK and the EU. There are many substantive issues at stake, but understanding Brexit requires a grasp of the strange, profoundly anachronistic, English understanding of sovereignty upon from which it is derived. [...]

Even within global politics sovereignty no longer refers exclusively to the capacity of the state to make arbitrary decisions, but rather to its international obligation ‘to preserve life-sustaining standards for its citizens’, while more widely observing the rule of law and postwar conventions on human rights. Sovereignty is thus about the responsibility to protect the rights and interests of the population, not control.

The key feature of the ‘Westminster model’ is that it does not differentiate between constitutional and normal law. Not only can any piece of legislation be undone by simple-majority vote; Parliament is also omnicompetent, as its legislative powers can override all claims to fundamental rights. For example, John Selden famously argued that Parliament could even make staying in bed after 8 o’clock a capital offence.[...]

Given all this, the European public can only hope that leaders in the UK and elsewhere—especially in those central- and eastern-European states whose obstinacy about the rule of law is based on a similar misreading of sovereignty—learn this lesson without doing too much harm to their peoples. If they do not, the result will be a less co-operative, less prosperous, more divisive and more dangerous environment, in Europe and around the world.

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Social Europe: The rule of law: a simple phrase with exacting demands

 How is it then that two EU governments venture to prolong the anguish of some half a billion Europeans, harming their own populations, by refusing to subject themselves to rule-of-law requirements? This cannot be dismissed as the position of two unhinged autocrats, since their veto has significant popular support in these countries, including 57 per cent approval in Poland. [...]

This has been evident in several instances—from lack of concern with the Silvio Berlusconi media monopoly in Italy to France’s semi-permanent state of emergency, Malta’s and Slovakia’s complacency with political murder and the Spanish government’s response to the 2017 independence referendum in Catalonia. Often, the EU is content with narrowly reducing the remit of the rule of law to a simple matter of legality—ignoring routine violations of core values, such as the right to peaceful assembly, freedom of speech or even the right to liberty and life itself.

Has the EU not thereby set itself up for the current crisis, supplying the ammunition for autocrats to try to absolve themselves from compliance with the rule of law? In turning a blind eye, the European Commission has harmed the union’s very normative foundation, endorsing the blatant abuse of power by the leaders of several of its member states.

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4Liberty: LGBTQ Community Became Viktor Orban’s Latest Scapegoat

In the second half of 2019, racism was the next topic to be tested, and the Hungarian Roma community became the focus point of Orbán’s hateful rhetoric. Orbán started with a harsh anti-Roma narrative, then denied financial compensation for Roma children who were forced to learn in segregated schools for years. Orbán portrayed the victims of segregated education as people who are “looking for free money”.[...]

In May 2020 Fidesz made a radical move: they completely banned legal gender recognition for Hungarian transgender and intersex people. This is an unprecedented phenomenon in Europe: legislators usually work towards a more equal society, not the other way around. This law ended a 20 year practise with which transgender people could (although, though a very long and malfunctioning, but still existing process) get the personal documents that provide their basic safety within the society. [...]

These cases show how Fidesz shifted from the “behind closed doors” narrative to the “pathologizing” narrative. And when Fidesz started talking about changing what LGBTQ people are doing in the privacy of their own home by sending them to conversion therapies or depriving them of their right to adopt, fundamental radical groups started to disrupt LGBTQ cultural indoor events.

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Reuters: Hungary's Orban calls for central Europe to unite around Christian roots

 “Western Europe had given up on ... a Christian Europe, and instead experiments with a godless cosmos, rainbow families, migration and open societies,” Orban said in a speech.

He said the monument, a 100-metre long and 4-metre wide ramp carved into a street near Budapest’s parliament building, was a call to central European nations to strengthen their alliance and rally around what he called the “Polish flagship”. [...]

Orban himself had rarely criticised rainbow, or same-sex families, but Parliament’s speaker - a long-time ally of Orban - had equated gay adoption with paedophilia.

Last weekend, two rainbow flags were torn down from municipals buildings in Budapest, prompting a warning from the U.S. Embassy that neo-Nazi groups should not be tolerated.

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European Council on Foreign Relations: Poland in the EU: How to lose friends and alienate people

 This year, when Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, was the first to call for an extraordinary EU summit to discuss the EU’s reaction to violent events in Belarus, his words did not generate an immediately positive reaction from other capitals. An extraordinary Foreign Affairs Council is eventually taking place today – but credit should also go to Lithuania, Germany, and Sweden. It is not just the result of successful diplomatic efforts on the part of Warsaw, even if the Polish foreign ministry has sought to present it this way for its domestic audience. If any capital is currently leading on the EU’s reaction to events in Belarus, it is not Poland but the much smaller Lithuania – which merits a separate story about how to punch above one’s weight. [...]

The Law and Justice party formed a government in 2015 with a lofty promise to lift Poland’s foreign policy from its knees. Since then, however, the country’s standing in the EU has hardly improved even a bit. If anything, the trend is in the opposite direction. The Coalition Explorer survey of policy professionals reveals that collectively they regard Poland as the second most disappointing country in the bloc, after Hungary. It is also among three countries (alongside Italy and Spain) that are most often seen as punching below their weight in EU politics. [...]

However, as usual, the devil lies in the detail. Apart from a limited group of the EU’s eastern member states (Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria; half of them Polish neighbours), rarely does anyone consider Poland as having the same longer-standing interests on EU policy; and only some of these countries (plus Germany) include Poland on the list of their most contacted partners. This clashes with Warsaw’s ambition to play the role of one of the EU’s post-Brexit ‘Big Five’, alongside Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. [...]

Most notably, the United Kingdom used to be the key western EU member that considered that Poland shared similar interests with it. This translated into strong contacts between the two capitals. Now this alliance has been moved outside the EU framework and, as a result, nowhere in the EU’s western part do policy professionals consider Poland as sharing interests with their country. Germany is the only pre-2004 EU member where Poland is among the most contacted partners – but Poland ranks only fifth, after France, Netherlands, Austria, and Spain (with which Germany does not even have the border). Relations between Warsaw and Berlin are far from perfect, to say the least, largely upon Poland’s own wish.

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Politico: Weak support for liberal democracy in EU’s east, poll says

The study published by the Globsec think tank found that in four out of 10 countries surveyed — Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia and Bulgaria — less than 50 percent of respondents backed "liberal democracy with regular elections and multiparty system" as the best form of government. [...]

In Austria, the preference was reversed, with the equivalent figures 7 percent and 92 percent. Meanwhile, in Hungary and Poland, 81 percent and 66 percent, respectively, voiced support for the system of liberal democracy. Twelve percent and 26 percent respectively want a strong leader. [...]

Majorities in Slovakia (72 percent), Estonia (56 percent), Hungary (52 percent) and the Czech Republic (72 percent) said migrants threaten their identity and values. [...]

In Hungary, 64 percent of respondents said they believe the government influences the media, while 62 percent said the same in Poland. Meanwhile 57 percent of Austrians said "oligarchs and strong financial groups" have such an influence.

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National Review: 82-Day Dictatorship

At the time of this great panic for Hungarian democracy, Hungarian opponents of Orbán spread ludicrous and easily-checkable claims about the legislation, saying that the parliament itself had been suspended and elections cancelled, a claim spread by people as eminent as Anne Applebaum. Other experts told us confidently that these powers were gathered by Orbán for the purpose of suppressing the inevitably disastrous performance of his nation’s health-care institutions. American political strategists predicted extravagant things, such as: “He’s going to wind up putting Gypsies in permanent detention…” [...]

Orbán is not immune from criticism for his use of the powers. He used the power to rule by fiat to pass a planned redevelopment of City Park, which his party desired to do but which has been blocked by the opposition in Parliament and by the mayor of Budapest. This is an abuse of emergency powers, and a bit of political hardball, though not one that touches on the fundaments of democracy. End runs like this are commonly done in the Western world. New York governor Andrew Cuomo used sweeping emergency powers to amend or rewrite hundreds of New York laws, including many unrelated to the response to COVID-19 that he couldn’t pass through the legislature. Among these was suspending the requirement that cities and towns publish certain legal notices, a serious source of income for local media that could lead to newspaper closures and will make it harder for citizens to know how their tax monies are being spent. This too is an abuse, but nobody outside of the letters to the editor section of newspapers seems to notice it. [...]

In my book, the police were too zealous and the law too broad. Neither of those two men should have been questioned even if they weren’t charged. But overzealous and lunkheaded investigations are launched by the police frequently in free countries. And Hungarian speech restrictions, even in the emergency, are put into relief when contrasted with European peers with great liberal reputations. Hundreds of people in the U.K. face lengthy and expensive trials or even prison sentences for charges under the Communications Act, and police there regularly threaten the public to watch what they say on social media. Germany’s Network Enforcement Act defines dangerous speech so broadly it would give supporters of opposition parties a second thought about expressing themselves on the Internet. Non-liberal states such as Russia, the Philippines, and Singapore have all cited it as an example to be emulated. German politicians have demanded that the law be made more repressive and loopholes in it be closed.

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The Washington Post: Where would U.S. democracy head in a second Trump term? Hungary and Poland show the answer.

Former Obama administration deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes clearly had this sentiment in mind last week when he tweeted, “If you want to know where Trump wants to take America in a second term, look at Russia, Hungary and Poland.” While comparing the United States’ potential future to Russia’s mafia-state was a stretch, Rhodes’s references to Hungary and Poland were not. [...]

Freedom House removed Hungary from its list of democracies last week, calling the country’s decline “the most precipitous ever tracked” by one of its flagship reports. Freedom House now labels the government led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban a “hybrid regime,” meaning that it marries some elements of democracy with those of an autocracy.

Under Orban, Hungary maintains some democratic traits; for example, it holds elections, albeit ones in which Orban’s government provides his party significant advantages. Yet Orban and his ruling coterie have neutered a once-vibrant media, politicized the administration of justice and promoted the interests of regime insiders such as the prime minister’s son-in-law, all while scapegoating migrants and asylum seekers. Orban recently dropped any semblance of adherence to democratic rule and used the fight against covid-19 to have Hungary’s parliament grant him indefinite rule by decree. [...]

There’s a reason all this may sound familiar. As multiple political scientists, intelligence officials and historians have documented, governments that turn away from democracy and the rule of law increasingly follow a consistent pattern. Summarized as a slow roll of subversion, elected autocrats chip away at democracy’s foundations in the courts, media and civil service with the grudging (or sometimes energetic) support of their political allies. As Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt put it, “Democracy’s erosion is, for many, almost imperceptible.” Yet that erosion is real, and the United States is experiencing it, too.

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TLDR News: Is Hungary a Dictatorship Now? Orban's Controversial Coronavirus Law Explained

Social Europe: How the new EU gender strategy fails east-central European women

The premise of the strategy is that gender equality is ‘an essential condition for an innovative, competitive and thriving European economy’, which ‘brings more jobs and higher productivity’. This is in line with what has historically driven the EU to legislate on equality between the sexes—the desire not to eradicate inequalities but to optimise the performance of the labour market by ensuring a steady supply of workers. Indeed, one of the key indicators through which the progress towards gender equality in EU member states is measured is the (increasing) proportion of women in the labour market. What this refuses to consider however, are the labour conditions which women are encouraged to enter.

As we have seen in east-central Europe, this experience has been far from emancipatory for many women, as a large proportion of the jobs created in the past three decades have been of poor quality: underpaid, low-skilled, socially undervalued and performed on zero-hours contracts. Kováts and Gregor showed in their research on Hungarian women that broad segments feel so exploited in the labour market that, rather than think how to escape home to do meaningful work and secure financial independence, their main concern is how to escape employment to be with their loved ones. This exposes the hollowness of the commission’s equation of gender equality with more women on the labour market, as at best out of touch and at worst wilfully class-blind. [...]

The narrow neoliberal framework through which the strategy challenges gender inequalities in the supply of care work is also evident in its focus on solving growing demand by encouraging (individual) men to take it up, as well as establishing institutions relieving women of these responsibilities. While both are certainly necessary, they are woefully inadequate to address the deeper underlying tension within capitalist societies—the need for reproductive labour to sustain productive labour, with the associated lack of valorisation and remuneration. Unless we fundamentally restructure ‘worker’ and ‘carer’ roles deemed separate and mutually exclusive, we cannot hope to eradicate this tension, no matter what work-life balance efforts we apply.

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openDemocracy: How the Greens won Budapest

On the back of an anti-Semitic re-election campaign that spring, Fidesz had secured 2/3 of the seats in Hungary’s gold-plated parliament building, giving it the right to change the country’s constitution at will – a power they’ve not been slow to use. None of the various progressive parties had managed to even reach second place: they’d also been beaten by another far right party, Jobbik. [...]

It’s not only Roma people. Orbàn has chased much of the Central European University out of Budapest, and attacked gender studies departments as part of his war on feminism. His allied oligarchs have bought out the majority of the press. Last year, openDemocracy uncovered a long list of examples of electoral malpractice in the 2018 election. And in 2018 more than one person said to me that public criticism of the ruling party – including in social media posts – can mean losing your job if you’re one of the many people on the government’s public works scheme. The country is sometimes described by those following the rise of the global far right as a model for social control with the veneer of democracy. [...]

Just as important, though, was a new innovation the party brought to Hungary: door-knocking. In a media environment where people don’t know what to believe, nothing beats meeting them face to face. While Fidesz rely on mobilising a huge database of their own supporters, the Greens knocked on thousands of doors, speaking to people about their concerns. Barabás tells me he personally knocked on 1,500 doors – 40% of the district he now represents, and that this is something other parties haven’t done in the past in Hungary.

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euobserver: German ex-commissioner Oettinger lands Orban job

According to the commission's rules, former commissioners have to notify the EU executive with "a minimum of two months' notice of their intention to engage in a professional activity during a period of two years after they have ceased to hold office". [...]

Oettinger has informed the commission that the Hungarian government had discussed with him a possible function in the Hungarian National Science Policy Council, a commission official said when asked by EUobserver on the matter. [...]

In 2016, Oettinger used a private plane for a travel to Budapest offered by a German businessman with strong Kremlin ties, Klaus Mangold, which possibly broke EU ethics rules - even though the commission at the time considered it to fall outside of its transparency and ethics rules.

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UnHerd: Will Britain join the European baby push?

For anyone who’s stood on a packed train lately, the idea that Britain faces a population crisis might seem absurd. But the platform crush belies a demographic crash, little noticed when England and Wales recently posted its lowest birth rate figures – of 1.7 babies per woman – since records began. [...]

Indeed many demographers view Britain as oddly unsupportive of natalism, and of 41 OECD countries, the UK comes in 34th in paid parental leave. While in France mothers receive extra-long maternity leave and a cash bonus after their third child, and there are travel perks and reduced income tax for large families, in Britain child benefit is means tested and capped at two children. Oh Mon Dieu! [...]

From the Baltic to the Black Sea, governments are thinking long-term demographic thoughts. Hungary, which now spends four times more on pro-natalist measures than it does on defence, aims to get the birth rate up to replacement level — 2.1 babies per mother — by 2030. [...]

If he has at least two terms in office, Boris will serve to see other countries grapple with demographic challenges, and might be surprised by what he sees. When Vladimir Putin gave his annual state of the union address last month he spent 20 minutes on constitutional reforms and twice as long on the need to remedy Russia’s birth-dearth. Here, as elsewhere, religion is increasingly invoked; in neighbouring Georgia, the birth rate jumped after the Orthodox Patriarch took to personally baptising babies.

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The Guardian: How liberalism became ‘the god that failed’ in eastern Europe

No single factor can explain the simultaneous emergence of authoritarian anti-liberalisms in so many differently situated countries in the second decade of the 21st century. Yet resentment at liberal democracy’s canonical status and the politics of imitation in general has played a decisive role. This lack of alternatives, rather than the gravitational pull of an authoritarian past or historically ingrained hostility to liberalism, is what best explains the anti-western ethos dominating post-communist societies today. The very conceit that “there is no other way” provided an independent motive for the wave of populist xenophobia and reactionary nativism that began in central and eastern Europe, and is now washing across much of the world. [...]

Liberalism’s reputation in the region never recovered from 2008. The financial crisis greatly weakened the case, still being made by a handful of western-trained economists, for continuing to imitate American-style capitalism. Confidence that the political economy of the west was a model for the future of mankind had been linked to the belief that western elites knew what they were doing. Suddenly it was obvious that they did not. This is why 2008 had such a shattering ideological, not merely economic, effect. [...]

Yet focusing on the corruption and deviousness of illiberal governments in the region will not help us understand the sources of popular support for national populist parties. The origins of populism are undoubtedly complex. But they partly lie in the humiliations associated with the uphill struggle to become, at best, an inferior copy of a superior model. Discontent with the “transition to democracy” in the post-communist years was also inflamed by visiting foreign “evaluators” who had little grasp of local realities. These experiences combined to produce a nativist reaction in the region, a reassertion of “authentic” national traditions allegedly suffocated by ill-fitting western forms. The post-national liberalism associated with EU enlargement allowed aspiring populists to claim exclusive ownership of national traditions and national identity. [...]

The extent of post-1989 emigration from eastern and central Europe, awakening fears of national disappearance, helps explain the deeply hostile reaction across the region to the refugee crisis of 2015-16, even though very few refugees have relocated to the countries of the region. We might even hypothesise that anti-immigration politics in a region essentially without immigrants is an example of what some psychologists call displacement – a defence mechanism by which, in this case, minds unconsciously blot out a wholly unacceptable threat and replace it with one still serious but conceivably easier to manage. Hysteria about non-existent immigrants about to overrun the country represents the substitution of an illusory danger (immigration) for the real danger (depopulation and demographic collapse) that cannot speak its name.

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The Economist: Central and eastern Europeans are mostly happy with progress since 1989

Standards of living for most of the region’s peoples have vastly improved, and most of them know it. New polling by the Pew Research Centre shows that 81% of Poles, 78% of Czechs and 55% of Hungarians agree that this is the case. Only Bulgarians on balance take a gloomy view, with just 32% of them thinking that their standard of living has improved since 1989. Development has been patchy, but for every depopulating and ageing rustbelt in eastern Europe there is a booming industrial region, a tech cluster or a services centre desperate for more workers. [...]

After three decades of democracy, cynicism about politicians is as widespread as it is in western Europe. In Slovakia 63% of people think most elected officials do not care what they think, a Pew poll finds; in Hungary, 71% and in Bulgaria, 78%. By way of comparison, the figures in France and Britain are 76% and 70%, respectively.

In western Europe and America such anger at the ruling class has translated into votes for nationalists, populists, Brexit and Donald Trump. In Hungary and Poland those who feel left behind tend to blame liberalism and the West. Zsuzsanna Szelenyi, who was an anti-communist activist in Hungary in 1989, says that many of her compatriots were disappointed after the fall of communism because they expected their country “to become like Austria overnight”. It did not, of course, but gdp per person, not to mention life expectancy, has risen sharply across the region.

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The Guardian: Anti-LGBT rhetoric stokes tensions in eastern Europe

In Poland, and elsewhere in central Europe, there has been a notable rise in tolerance and empathy towards the LGBT community in recent years, illustrated by the emergence of a confident new generation of activists in smaller towns and cities. But across the region, populist politicians and church leaders are using the issue to mobilise their conservative bases. [...]

That message will resonate with activists in Poland, where senior members of the ruling right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) have engaged in an increasingly ferocious campaign portraying so-called “LGBT ideology” as a menace akin to that of Soviet-imposed communism. In the run-up to parliamentary elections this month, which PiS narrowly won, the “LGBT issue” emerged as one of the main campaign grounds. [...]

In Hungary, where the church is less powerful than in Poland, there is less deep-rooted homophobia. Budapest was one of the first cities in the region to have pride marches. But in recent months the ruling Fidesz party of the far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has begun what appears to be a coordinated homophobic campaign. [...]

n the Czech Republic, attitudes are even more progressive, with a recent survey showing 61% of people supported a bill currently under consideration that would legally enshrine gay marriage. But here too, conservative politicians are rallying part of their base with homophobic rhetoric disguised as a promotion of “traditional values”.

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UnHerd: Has Hungary conceived a baby boom?

Both Hitler and Mussolini incentivised childbearing with limited success. In the 1960s Romanian dictator Nicolai Ceaușescu, eager to boost his nation’s demographic heft, removed the availability of contraception overnight. At first there was a sharp increase in the number of babies being born, but before too long people found ways around the system, and by the time of his fall, Ceaușescu’s Romania was not performing much better from a population perspective than most of its neighbours – which is to say, very poorly. [...]

Likewise in nearby Poland, where the current government stands on a pro-traditional-family platform and since 2016 has offered relatively generous child benefits – £100 per month per child – as well as maintaining strict anti-abortion laws. The policy has been credited with helping the ruling Law and Justice party win re-election, but, as in Hungary, the rise in fertility is small and still leaves Poland at barely two-thirds of what would be required for replacement. [...]

For now, two things for sure can be said. First, the best guarantee of avoiding the very lowest fertility rates in developed countries is an acceptance of extra-marital births and assistance to women in combining work and family. Where women get the education to aspire but are not encouraged to combine aspiration with motherhood, they tend to opt for the former, which is why fertility rates are so low in countries with traditional attitudes to women in the workplace, such as Italy and Japan, but higher in places like Scandinavia and France.

Second, much as governments can try their best, the only true guarantee of replacement fertility is a family-oriented and child-loving culture. Societies or ethnic groups wanting to survive and thrive should not just look to their governments for tax breaks and benefits but should look to themselves, their values and attitudes.

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The Guardian: Election results give hope to opposition in Poland and Hungary

Cas Mudde, a political scientist and leading populism expert at the University of Georgia, said: “In both Hungary and Poland the opposition seemed to understand the fundamental challenge to liberal democracy they were facing. Strategic collaboration is crucial, particularly when the government party is gaming the system by, for example, controlling the media.” [...]

In Hungary, meanwhile, the hardline prime minister, Viktor Orbán, suffered his greatest political setback in a decade when a pro-European, centre-left challenger ousted the Fidesz-backed incumbent as mayor of Budapest by 51% to 44%. [...]

The tactic of fielding joint candidates could potentially offer a route to mounting a serious challenge to the strongman prime minister at the next general elections in 2022, although it could prove more difficult to replicate on a national level. [...]

But the performance of Poland’s Left alliance in returning to parliament also suggested that “with good organisation and positive messaging, opposition parties can do well” even in environments where they are under pressure, he added.

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euronews: Hungary local elections: Opposition candidate Karácsony unseats Fidesz-backed incumbent in Budapest

Hungary's opposition scored its biggest election victory in a decade on Sunday when opposition challenger Gergely Karacsony defeated ruling party-backed incumbent Istvan Tarlos in the Budapest mayoral election. [...]

Opposition parties were also projected to win a majority in the Budapest General Assembly with 17 members, compared with 14 delegates from Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s ruling Fidesz-Christian Democrat alliance and two independents. [...]

Budapest is home to about a fifth of Hungary’s population of 10 million, but it is responsible for more than a third of its economic output and plays an outsized role in all walks of national life.

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