Can free expression survive in Hungary?

I meet Gabriella Csoszó in a small, arty café close to Budapest’s ornate, 19th-century Market Hall. She runs a royalty-free photography archive and is a founding member of NEMMA, an organisation created to raise awareness of diminishing artistic freedom in Hungary. Quite a few people didn’t feel comfortable talking to me but the first thing Csoszó says is that her country “is already halfway into dictatorship”.

Since it was elected in 2010, Viktor Orbán’s party, Fidesz, which holds two-thirds of the seats in parliament, has pushed forward with constitutional reforms. Opponents say he is divorcing Hungary from the rest of democratic Europe. Apart from exerting tight control over the arts sector, Orbán has criminalised homelessness, reserved for himself the right to elect university rectors and approved a law requiring students who accept state scholarships to stay in Hungary.

Newstatesman