Crackdown prompts Soros's Open Society to quit Budapest

George Soros’s Open Society Foundations has revealed plans to close its Budapest office ahead of a crackdown on civil society by the right-wing government of the re-elected Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán.

Employees were told on Thursday that the organisation, which distributes grants to local civil society groups, will close or drastically reduce operations at its office in the Hungarian capital in July and relocate to Berlin by August, the Guardian has learned from multiple sources.

“You might understand if I don’t cry my eyes out,” Orbán said in his regular radio interview on Friday. Since his Fidesz party won a two-thirds majority in parliament this month, Orbán has claimed a political mandate to push ahead with a new law targeting NGOs with foreign funding.

The Open Society Foundation, founded by the billionaire philanthropist, said in a statement on Friday it was “closely watching developments around draft legislation that would dramatically restrict the activities of civil society in Hungary”. Its office in Budapest employs about 100 staff and oversees funding to other central and eastern European countries.

The proposed “stop Soros” law, which parliament will discuss next week, would enforce a 25% tax on foreign donations to NGOs that back migration to Hungary and allows the interior ministry to reject groups that work on migration-related issues on a national security basis after vetting by security agencies.

Voices in Hungary’s shrinking civil sphere say the legislation is designed to silence organisations troublesome to Orbán, who has in recent years been increasingly hostile to Soros.

The overwhelmingly anti-immigration-focused election campaign that returned Orbán’s Fidesz government to power this month presented Soros as the personification of open border policies.

Since entering Hungary in 1984, the OSF has distributed some $400m in the country _ including to several senior Fidesz politicians and Orbán himself. Its donation of photocopiers to critical samizdat publications played a role in the fall of communism.

“Orbán needed a mythical enemy which cannot really fight back and OSF organisations have been consciously demonised,” said Tamás Bodoky, of the investigative journalism website Átlátszó, an OSF-grantee which is also 50% funded from crowdfunding.

“The campaign, which has demolished George Soros for over a year, has a dual purpose: to intimidate critical voices and to fund government-friendly coverage from taxpayers’ money. We don’t yet know if this will impact us, since there is no final version of the bill, but we expect that it might affect our funding.

“With the departure of the OSF, both goals have been fulfilled: the organisations supported by Soros have panicked and the government propaganda media can list ‘Soros mercenaries’.”

Márta Pardavi, co-director of the Helsinki Committee, which receives 28% of its annual income from OSF, said: “This move signals how fast the operational context is deteriorating in Hungary.

“We are being attacked for reminding governments that power does have limitations in Europe and people can rely on civil society organisations to protect them when that power is being abused.”