Freedom House: Democracy still better in Romania than in Hungary

In Romania, Slovakia, and especially Bulgaria, the “trend towards stabilisation of instability” continued in 2022, Freedom House stated in its annual report on the state of democracy in Eastern European and Central Asian countries published on Wednesday. However, according to the report, this is not the case with Hungary.

According to the American civil society organisation Freedom House, the state of democracy worsened in 11 of the 29 countries examined, and improved in seven last year, Agerpres reports. Romania’s classification has not changed compared to last year.

Romania’s considered a “semi-consolidated democracy”

Regarding Romania, the report states that, unlike Bulgaria and Slovakia, the country had a stable government in 2022. That is a welcome development considering that coalitions with fragile majorities previously governed for a long time.

Freedom House calculates countries’ democracy scores based on seven criteria. The evaluation is done on a scale between 1 and 7, where 1 is the lowest and 7 the highest level of democracy, TransTelex explains.

Romania’s democracy score is 4.36. Projected on a scale of 0-100, this means a democracy level of 56 percent. Based on this, the report classified Romania among the “semi-consolidated democracies”. The evaluation of Romania was similar last year: its classification did not change compared to 2022.

Freedom House: ‘Antidemocratic machinations’ in Hungary

In relation to Hungary, the report highlights as one of the striking changes of the past year that, while among the EU countries, Poland has stopped on the slope on which it went along with Hungary in the gradual decline of the level of democracy in the last decade, the country led by Viktor Orbán and Fidesz continues to slide down.

“Events in Hungary put Fidesz’s antidemocratic machinations in full view. The March parliamentary elections were rife with irregularities, abuses of administrative resources, and media distortions, resulting in another supermajority for the Fidesz-led coalition. Government-backed smear campaigns against critical NGOs and members of the National Judicial Council—considered to be Hungary’s last reservoir of judicial independence—demonstrated the Orbán regime’s deepening intolerance of dissenting voices,” the statement of Freedom House says.

Even worse scores than last year

The report continues to classify Hungary as a hybrid regime, despite the deterioration in the state of democracy there, according to the report’s authors. Hungary’s democracy score is 3.57, or 43 percent on a scale of 0-100. Last year, Hungary’s democracy score was 3.68, a 45 percent democracy score.

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