Hungarian Media Law: the symbol of a Major challenge for a Democratic European Union

Major democratic deficits can easily occur within regional organisations recognising fundamental rights and the rule of law, and these organisations might have hard times confronting them. The paper focuses on the authoritarian shift occurred in Hungary, despite this country being a Member State of the European Union (EU). It focuses particularly on one of the main instruments used by the government to implement this shift, that is media regulation, and on the EU reaction to it. The EU has supported media pluralism and cultural diversity within the international negotiations on audiovisual services, but it has not been able to guarantee them at its Member States level. This is particularly evident in the case of Hungary. The paper aims to show that the so called Media Act and Press Freedom Act have been adopted without any consideration of fundamental rights, recognised in both domestic and EU law, and the rule of law. The result is a very centralised system controlled by the government (eventually even for what concerns electronic media). This system is run by the diarchy of the Media Authority and the Media Council. Public media have been brought under the government’s control. As highlighted by the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammarberg, the Media Council has become ‘the indirect employer of all journalists of all public service broadcasting’. Private independent media engaged in political and civic debates are progressively excluded from the public realm, as the Klubrádió case shows well. Media can’t therefore be the watchdogs of democracy anymore. The situation of Hungarian media needs to be placed in a wider framework, because many other realms of Hungarian life, from the judiciary to religions have been touched by government interventions. They all have been interested by authoritative and nationalist legal reforms. The law in context approach is precious to study recent Hungarian media laws and the amendments to former ones, because it shows that legal reforms are the fruit of a political and social context that is creating a strong democratic deficit. Media in fact both represent and shape society, and authoritarian regimes have always tried to control them. The paper argues that the Hungarian situation is the main challenge for a democratic Union. However, the EU has not been able to find effective legal and political means to reply to it. It seems to be caught between ‘soft means’ that have been so far ineffective and ‘hard means’ like Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), sanctioning violations of human rights and the rule of law by a Member State, whose consequences are difficult to predict.