Congress member Christopher H. Smith, also co-chairman of the US Helsinki Commission said in a written statement that many of the criticisms towards the Orbán Government are unfair, involving double standards, misrepresentation, and inaccurate information.

Claudia Leporatti, an Italian journalist based in Budapest and editor of Italian news sites economia.hu and East Journal, rejected reports on alleged autocratic regime in Hungary.in an interview to online magazine ’Il Punto’. She said that stigmatising the Government’s activities as a nationalist turn is highly exaggerated. The picture seen from within is different from the representation provided by the international press, she added, emphasizing that if freedom of speech was as trampled on as the international press reports, she would never have moved to Hungary as a journalist. European People’s Party’s German MEP (Christian-Democratic Group) Ursula Braun-Moser wrote a letter to Germany’s daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on the occasion of criticism regarding Hungary’s Fundamental Law, in which she took a clear stance in favour of the Government.

It is totally erroneous to say that Hungary is not a democratic country, German social democrat politician Klaus von Dohnanyi said at a panel discussion in Berlin. Dohnanyi, also Federal Minister of Education and Science up until 1981 and former mayor of the city of Hamburg, drew attention to the importance of studying facts thoroughly as well as interpreting Hungarian politics in a particular social and historical context. In order to understand current developments in Hungary, it must be taken into consideration that Hungarians, despite being freedom-loving people, lived under foreign control for centuries, he added. Georg Paul Hefty, former chief editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung told the podium discussion that German press reports on Hungary are often biased. The event was moderated by Bela Anda, German paper Bild’s editor-in-chief and former spokesperson for Schröder Chancellor’s left-wing Government and included among the discussion’s participants as prominent German public figures as the author and journalist Ildiko von Kürthy and President of the Technical University of Applied Sciences Wildau László Ungvári.

(Prime Minister's Office)