Analysis
EU Values Foresight
Information Sovereignty
Shaping the Debate: How to Secure Our Democracies from Malign Interference
10 December 2024
1 June 2021
Many Slovak political players are looking at Viktor Orbán: the recent dynamics concerning the Slovak citizenship law as well as the supposedly unfair treatment of Central Europe by the West have probably also created more opportunities for him to export his ideology across the Danube. While Slovak Hungarians cannot vote in Hungary, they can absorb Orbán’s ideology.
Hungary returns in full form to Slovak politics after a prolonged absence. The year 2021 witnessed new tensions around the Slovak citizenship law that affects ethnic Hungarians, Prime Minister Igor Matovič’s vaccination adventures in Moscow and Budapest, which cost him his job, as well as the sudden intervention of Viktor Orbán in the Slovak ideological market through his long interview to a conservative daily.
All these now form a part of a complicated Slovak-Hungarian puzzle, which also has a regional dimension. Viktor Orbán is proposing a ‘geopolitical’ vision of a unified Central Europe that is different from Western Europe in normative and political terms.
Yet, upon closer inspection, this Central European unity seems to be a bit of a sandcastle.