(Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Viktor Orban got the green light from Hungary’s parliament to extend his rule-by-decree by another six months, keeping the centralization of power that set Budapest on a collision course with the European Union.
Lawmakers voted on Monday to extend the state of emergency until May of next year, allowing Orban to issue decrees and overwrite laws without the regular parliamentary procedures.
While Orban’s Fidesz party holds a two-thirds majority in the Hungarian legislature, decree rule allows the government to accelerate legal changes in a country where the nationalist leader has sought to eliminate checks-and-balances on his power. The EU is withholding about €20 billion ($21.8 billion) in funding earmarked for Hungary due to rule-of-law concerns.
Hungary has been under various states of emergency going back to 2016, when the government declared a so-called state of danger due to the migration crisis. In 2020, parliament expanded the government’s scope of authority citing the Covid pandemic.
Then in mid-2022, that justification was replaced with references to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, following a constitutional change allowing decree rule in situations including when war breaks out in a neighboring state.
Civil society groups including Amnesty International said the state of emergency laws have been abused to erode checks and balances, often in areas of everyday governance that have little to do with the emergency at hand.
Separately, Hungary’s parliament on Monday amended legislation that had placed senior politicians, including Orban’s ministers, in charge of foundations governing public universities. The new changes ban top officials from taking up such positions and also impose term limits on trustees.
The earlier law had prompted the EU to suspend 21 Hungarian universities from its popular Erasmus program, affecting thousands of Hungarians who annually study abroad in another member state. It also excluded university researchers from EU-funded projects.
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