The foundation run by US-Hungarian billionaire George Soros said Tuesday it was closing operations in Hungary and relocating to Germany in response to the "repressive" policies of Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government. "Faced with an increasingly repressive political and legal environment in Hungary, the Open Society Foundations (OSF) are moving their Budapest-based international operations and staff to the German capital, Berlin," the network said in a statement.
Orban, re-elected last month for a third consecutive term in office, has long accused the 87-year-old Soros and non-governmental organisations he funds of orchestrating immigration and plotting to undermine the cultural and religious identity of Europe.
"We won't be shedding any crocodile tears," the government's press office told AFP in an email Tuesday reacting to the news of the foundation's departure. OSF said the decision follows the latest steps by Orban to "impose further restrictions" on NGOs.
Earlier this year, citing national security concerns, the government announced a so-called "Stop Soros" package of draft laws aimed at "shedding light" and clamping down on NGOs receiving funding from abroad. The proposals include a special tax on such NGOs, secret service surveillance of their staff, and a ban on travel to Hungary's border zones for Hungarians deemed to be involved in "illegal immigration". Foreign NGO staff under similar suspicion could be barred from entering the country altogether.
The OSF decision is "regrettable," said the EU's first vice president Frans Timmermans.
"Whenever a civil society organisation that helps build vibrant & tolerant democracies is threatened & feels it can no longer do its work, democracy suffers," he tweeted.
Rights groups in Hungary and abroad have denounced the proposals as an effort to silence critics. "The reason why OSF has reached this decision is very telling of how fast our operational context is deteriorating," Marta Pardavi, co-head of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a refugee rights NGO that has come under regular attack by the government, told AFP Tuesday.
Amnesty International, another NGO in the government's crosshairs, said it was not closing its Hungary operations "for now".