‘Attack on civil society’: why Viktor Orbán’s favourite thinktank is in crisis

The piece argues that the current turmoil around one of Viktor Orbán’s most favored thinktanks reflects Hungary’s broader push to control civil society and reshape the policy ecosystem in line with the ruling Fidesz agenda.

It describes how Orbán’s government has increasingly treated independent or critical voices as a threat to “sovereignty,” using legal and regulatory changes to constrain NGOs and other non-state actors. In that environment, even institutions that align closely with the government can find themselves operating under heightened scrutiny, shifting political priorities, and more restrictive rules for funding, legitimacy, and public influence.

The article presents the thinktank’s crisis as both a symptom and a consequence of that wider political climate: as the state tightens the space for civil society, competition for resources and access to influence becomes more intense, and organizations closely tied to the governing side can become vulnerable to internal power struggles and external challenges.

It also notes that the government’s approach is consistently portrayed by critics as an “attack on civil society,” with reforms that raise compliance burdens and chill independent activity. In this context, the thinktank’s situation is portrayed less as an isolated business problem and more as part of a system-wide confrontation over who gets to set the policy narrative in Hungary.