Lili Bayer
@liliebayer
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Europe Live Blogger @guardian . American-Israeli-Hungarian, nerdy about all things Europe. lili.bayer @theguardian .com
Brussels/Budapest
Joined April 2013
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After yesterday’s huge demonstration in Budapest, I sat down with Péter Magyar, the former gov insider who wants to build a centrist movement to challenge Orbán.
Interview:
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Big day here in Budapest, as US announced sanctions against a Hungary-based bank linked to Russia,
Tough words from Ambassador Pressman on Hungary’s continued relationship with Moscow.
Read more here:
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Meanwhile, Hungarian foreign minister Szijjártó is having a quiet morning in Moscow
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I’ve covered many Hungarian protests but rarely seen anything like this. Internet network collapsed earlier, but here’s a bit of footage:
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Hello from Budapest, where a huge crowd is now marching toward parliament, led by Péter Magyar.
Stay tuned
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Got lost in Council building and came across this gem in a random room
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Billy Elliot cancelled at the Hungarian State Opera after the ruling party's daily writes that kids will become gay if they watch it. Censorship in
#Hungary
has reached music, too.
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The state of affairs in Hungary has reached a point where a vice president of Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party blamed “the Jews” for election results in a county where there is no Jewish community because they were murdered 75 years ago.
He was inventing non-existent Jews to blame.
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Pro-Ukrainian demonstration in Vilnius this evening ahead of the summit. “Ukraine is welcome in NATO” signs.
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NEW: The US ambassador to Hungary has said Washington will act amid Budapest’s “dangerously unhinged anti-American messaging” and “expanding relationship with Russia”.
Probably one of the most unusual speeches ever given by US diplomat in EU.
Story:
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Anti-Orbán protesters have crossed the Danube and are heading to castle district to demonstrate.
#Hungary
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Personal news: I am joining the
@guardian
as Europe live blogger.
I'll be based in Brussels but covering news from across Europe. Incredibly excited to be part of an amazing team!
Send tips: lili.bayer
@theguardian
.com
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30-year old Bulgarian reporter Victoria Marinova was murdered yesterday, the third murder of a journalist in the EU in less than a year. The last story she was working on had to do with state corruption. RIP.
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As of today there is no more freedom of speech in Hungary: groups expressing vaguely-defined "pro-immigration" views will face a 25% tax.
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Polish independent media suspended news coverage and the webpages of the country’s leading news organizations were blank this morning to protest a new advertising tax that broadcasters and publishers say is aimed at undermining the freedom of the press.
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Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán suffers biggest political defeat in a decade.
#Hungary
@POLITICOEurope
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CEU set to leave Hungary: Possibly the most dramatic moment of the day was when a university official said that the move to Vienna of thousands of students, staff, and their families would be the biggest forced exodus from Hungary since 1956.
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Personal news: I will be moving to a new role
@POLITICOEurope
focusing on NATO and Central Europe.
Looking forward to working with my awesome colleagues on expanding our coverage at such a critical time for the region.
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Tens of thousands of Hungarians, led by former gov insider Péter Magyar, protested against Orbán’s leadership today.
My story from Budapest, mostly typed on my phone sitting on the ground in front of parliament as Magyar addressed the vast crowd:
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"Dear Hungarian Friends!"
Front page of Gazeta Wyborcza this morning has open letter of solidarity to Index journalists and editors in both Polish and Hungarian.
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I spoke with over a dozen journalists working for Slovenia’s public media outlets.
Many accuse Prime Minister Janša of whipping up hatred against reporters, resulting in threatening messages. Journalists say the pressure has led to self-censorship.
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Big news from Hungary: Six opposition parties will run on a joint list and will support a joint candidate for prime minister in a bid to defeat Orbán in 2022.
@POLITICOEurope
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Ágnes Heller passed away today.
A philosopher and keen observer of today’s Hungary, she was a Holocaust survivor and target of frequent hate campaigns by the Orbán-controlled media. May her memory be a blessing.
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Personal news: From January, I will be covering lobbying, transparency and the rule of law
@POLITICOEurope
.
I will also be writing the EU Influence newsletter, while the amazing
@cgs_atl
becomes Executive Producer, Audio, working on the EU Confidential podcast & other projects.
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The Hungarian government has sumitted a proposal for a 25% tax on any organization supporting migration, with "support" defined as even portraying migration positively. This will come in addition to the anti-NGO law that could put rights defenders in jail.
#Hungary
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In the nineteenth century Christian Hungarian-speakers didn't even amount to a majority of the population in what was then Hungary. In 1910, about 23% of Budapest's population was Jewish. Now, Orbán doesn't want to "create a country of mixed population."
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Huge crowd marching in central Budapest in solidarity with CEU.
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I’ve covered many debates and discussions about Hungary, but can’t remember anything like what happened last night, when the majority of European heads of state and government issued scathing and at times very emotional critiques directly to Orbán.
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Watching the morning news on Hungarian state TV — not a word about reports that the Hungarian government used a spyware tool to break into the phones of journalists, lawyers and others.
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Your Brexit soundtrack for the day:
--"Tell me what you want, what you really, really want" (Spice Girls)
--"You can't always get what you want" (Rolling Stones, via
@TimmermansEU
)
--"Hello from the outside, at least I can say that I've tried" (Adele)
--"Help" (The Beatles)
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Hungarian opposition candidate Péter Márki-Zay now addressing protesters in front of state media headquarters. They are demanding an end to Russian propaganda on Hungarian state TV.
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I'm hearing incredibly shocked and worried reactions from the Hungarian Jewish community today, after a member of parliament from Orban's Fidesz party posted photo of dead pig with "He was Soros!!!" written on it.
#Hungary
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Israeli private intelligence firm Black Cube was involved in a campaign to discredit NGOs ahead of Hungary’s April 2018 election, according to a former Black Cube employee & a person with knowledge of company's inner workings. My story for
@POLITICOEurope
.
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Protest march against Orbán starting. People from across political spectrum here. Heavy presence of riot police.
#Hungary
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Today is a day historians might end up studying years from now. Viktor Orbán's government could get the ability to rule by decree — without a time limit. And during that indefinite time, there can be no elections.
#Hungary
#ruleoflaw
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Thousands of protesters are outside Hungarian state TV headquarters. State TV channel M1 at the moment airing reports on terrorism in Germany and migrants on US-Mexican border.
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Advice to
#Hungary
watchers: forget about Bannon and Milo's Budapest visits, ignore anything you hear with the name George Soros in it, and look at what's happening with the judiciary.
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NEW: Hungarian state media bosses told staff they need permission to report on Greta Thunberg and EU politics, and banned coverage of reports from leading human rights organizations, according to internal emails obtained by
@POLITICOEurope
.
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My report on Slovenia, now available to read in German
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How Orbán broke the EU —and got away with it.
I spoke with key insiders from the past decade, including
@VivianeRedingEU
@NeelieKroesEU
@TNavracsicsEU
@GOettingerEU
@jyrkikatainen
@judithineuropa
@ruitavares
. Thoughts also from
@JMDBarroso
@trocsanyi
.
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In dark towns and villages, with little food and no phone signal, ethnic Armenians in Karabakh are scrambling to find loved ones while many fear what could happen if Azerbaijani soldiers come into their homes.
@Andrew__Roth
reports
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While everyone is distracted by Orbán's threats over Ukraine, Hungary has passed a highly controversial 'sovereignty' law.
Independent media outlets have warned the new law is “capable of severely restricting the freedom of the press”.
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Some personal news: I will soon be moving to Brussels to work as a full-time reporter at
@POLITICOEurope
, focusing on
#EUBudget
#MFF
. Thank you to all the friends and colleagues who made my time in Budapest so memorable. Stay tuned for
#Hungary
election coverage next week!
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Only in Hungary: Before walking into a restaurant or hotel, you can check an app — created by anti-corruption org K-Monitor — showing if owners are (allegedly) connected to the government, according to the anti-corruption group.
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Since Hungary’s April election Orbán has moved to:
—Make giving info to asylum-seekers about their rights illegal
—Block all ways to legally seek asylum in Hungary
—Make homelessness illegal
—Limit freedom of assembly, with even whistling during an Orbán speech a jailable offense
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Covering an anti-Orbán protest today in the northern Hungarian city of Eger. It’s -9 degrees Celsius.
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Just when you think Hungarian politics could not get any weirder, the foreign minister posts a video accusing Ukraine's government of discussing the option of influencing the outcome of Hungary's election.
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ICYMI: On his first day in office, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala sent a message to capitals around the world, one heard from Brussels to Budapest to Beijing: Our country is turning west.
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This year’s Budapest Pride Parade was unusual in many ways.
Many teens came to march for the very first time. MEPs travelled to Hungary to show solidarity. The crowd was huge.
Here is my report, written mostly sitting on a Budapest sidewalk.
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When the history of 21st century anti-Semitism in Europe will be written, this tweet from a senior Hungarian government official will certainly merit a mention.
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"Lili Bayer, Soros' Brussels mouthpiece"
It's happened to me dozens of time, but still weird to read conspiratorial articles about oneself that have nothing to do with reality -- all supported by ads paid for by the Hungarian state.
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In his tweets and blog Orbán’s international spokesperson often focuses on me, as well as Agnes Heller and Paul Lendvai. Now he’s trying to connect me to András Hont. The only thing we all have in common? We’re all Hungarian Jews.
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At 6:30 this morning, Radio Free Europe once again began operating in Hungary.
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Hungarians woke up today to realization that Orbán gov implemented plan to remove the statue of Imre Nagy, reformist leader during the 1956 revolution who was hanged in 1958. Reminder: Orbán got his political start with speech at reburial of Nagy. Critics say this is revisionism
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Over the past 24 hours, Hungary's chief rabbi resigned, a major daily newspaper shut down, and a radio station stopped broadcasting.
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This car just drove by the Hungarian Permanent Representation to the EU.
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Today we remember Hungary's 1848 revolution.
The revolutionaries had 12 "points" -- the first was a demand for press freedom and end of censorship.
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You know it's campaign season when it's 7:45am and Orbán is on the radio talking about Hungary's economic losses in the 1920 Treaty of Trianon.
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My dispatch from Budapest, where a bewildering political situation has emerged.
The government says it is aligned with the EU and NATO. But state and Fidesz-linked media are promoting disinformation and a Russian narrative on the war next door.
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Slovenia’s government has (once again) suspended funding for the Slovenian Press Agency.
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Incredibly grateful to the Brussels fire department for climbing through a 7th floor window to help me today when I got trapped in a room. And thanks to Brussels police for responding so quickly.
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Viktor Orbán said today he has zero tolerance for anti-Semitism.
The very first thing he did after getting elected on Sunday was sit down for an interview with one of Hungary's most notorious anti-Semites.
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Senior Trump aide Sebastian Gorka forged key ties to anti-Semitic groups in Hungary. My investigation for
@jdforward
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Orban's message: anyone who doesn't vote for him next Sunday is "Sorosist", anti-Hungarian, and anti-Christian. The prime minister's big TV interview over the weekend included nearly no mention of policy, only anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic rhetoric, complaints about Western Europe
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This is what Hungarian censorship looks like.
Judit Varga's ex husband gave a bombshell interview with details that are objectively in public interest to know, including senior officials putting pressure for inflated contracts, but it's not reported in gov-affiliated media.
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Most memorable moment of the Vilnius NATO summit for me: asking President Zelenskyy a question.
Good way to start wrapping up my 7 years writing for Politico Europe, first as a freelancer in Budapest and then over 5 years as a full-time reporter in Brussels.
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The feeling one gets when listening to Orbán's big anti-Muslim, anti-media, pro-Russian, and homophobic speech today is that this is the kind of rant one used to see in the comment sections of small, fringe far-right websites just a few years ago. Now it's state policy.
#Hungary
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Starting to think there's a new time zone in Europe. It's called Standard EUCO Time (CET+4/5/6/7/8)
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The Hungarian parliament just passed both a controversial anti-NGO law that could put human rights defenders in jail and a constitutional amendment that among other things creates parallel judicial structure, helping gov circumvent remaining independent judges.
#Hungary
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SARGENTINI REPORT ADOPTED. In historic vote, European Parliament for the first time calls for Article 7 rule of law sanctions against a member state.
#Hungary
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Xi Jinping reassured Zelenskyy that Beijing would not add “fuel to the fire” of the war in Ukraine and insisted the time was ripe to “resolve the crisis politically.”
@StuartKLau
@NikaMelkozerova
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Meet Adrien, a 32-year old Belgian-Canadian studying at CEU.
He’s facing 2-8 years in Hungarian prison. Police say he committed “group violence” toward law enforcement at an anti-Orbán protest. He denies all charges.
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“The Cold War is back,” said a former senior Belgian intelligence official, adding that there are now more agents operating in Brussels than in the years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. My article this morning for
@POLITICOEurope
.
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Orban's Fidesz just suffered a significant defeat: with 78% of votes counted, independent candidate Péter Márki-Zay won the mayoral race in Hódmezővásárhely with over 57% of the vote. The Fidesz candidate got 41.8% in the former party stronghold.
#Hungary
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NEW: According to more than a dozen officials and an analysis of internal documents, European Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi has overseen a push to play down concerns about the rule of law and human rights in candidates for EU membership.
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It's time... for my summit soundtrack.
--Don't Stop Believing (Timmermans)
--Let it go (Weber)
--Let Her Go (Vestager)
--I'll be there for you (Barnier)
--Listen to Your Heart (Orbán)
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“Russians go home”
Protesters left messages outside Russia’s embassy in Budapest
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Can't decide if Hungarian politics right now is House of Cards, Borgen or the Godfather.
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Political earthquake in Hungary.
Katalin Novák, the president, has resigned.
Judit Varga, who was supposed to lead the Fidesz list in the European election, is leaving public life.
Details:
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I know no mother of four in Hungary who currently pays income taxes, because lack of sufficient childcare, low wages, and high cost means it is nearly impossible for a woman to raise four kids in Hungary without falling out of the workforce.
#realitycheck
Hungary is so desperate for kids that mothers of four won’t need to pay income tax
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