The nuclear deal should be central in the Hungarian opposition's campaign

Hungary's nuclear deal with Russia, and its handling, could be a powerful weapon in the opposition's hands, with elections due in April

On January 31, Hungary’s Ministry of National Development announced that the documents justifying Hungary’s new nuclear energy deal with Russia will remain secret for 10 years. The nuclear cooperation agreement, signed during Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s January 14 visit to Moscow, stipulates that Russia will lend Hungary 10 billion euros for upgrading the country’s aging Paks nuclear power plant.  A bill containing no new information regarding the deal was presented to Parliament, but the details of the financial agreement will only be submitted after Parliament approves the vague legislation.

What might appear to be a show for Parliament is really a show for the people. However unrealistic it is to authorise an investment – and the biggest one in post-Communist Hungarian history – without being aware of its financial consequences, it will surely present no problem to Mr Orbán’s servile supermajority. The formal procedure, however, for authorising such an agreement through Parliament will apparently be more or less followed. More or less: while there is a bill – and there will be another one – lawmakers, much like the general population, know nothing about the economic, financial or political rationale of Mr Orbán’s decision that Russia, through its state-owned companies, finance, plan, and build two new reactors at the Paks nuclear power plant.

Cynical Fidesz-men are reportedly hoping that the opposition will make Paks a key point of its campaign, relying on the age-old axiom that Hungarians cannot be mobilised by such abstract matters as foreign and energy policy. Yet the opposition would do better, and probably will, actively deal with the nuclear energy agreement, for it shows the inherent discrepancy between Fidesz’ rhetoric and actions better than any other issue.

Let’s take an incomplete list of the rhetorical ‘fights’ that the Fidesz party relies on for the engagement and mobilisation of its voters. The ‘fight’ against the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, the ‘fight’ against state debt – altogether, the ‘fight’ for independence. The fight against the banks that swindled the people with their foreign currency mortgages. The fight against the left, which ‘traded away the future of  Hungarians’ and ‘hid the figures of the economy from them’ while in power. This is the rhetoric that Fidesz has used to drive public discourse in the past 4 years.

Now, through its new deal with Russia, the Fidesz government contradicts all of its main policies. It extends and solidifies Hungary’s dependence on Russia in its energy sector. The planning, building and servicing of the two reactors – which will provide more than 40% of Hungary’s current energy consumption for two generations, together with the loan, makes for the kind of foreign policy leverage an ambitious Russia would be pleased with. It will be a 30-year, 10 billion-euro loan – technically a foreign currency mortgage, a product the government has denounced as flawed – at a time when, due to a mix of reckless fiscal and monetary policy and unfavourable external factors, the forint is plummeting. With this, the government prescribes the basics of Hungary’s energy, and therefore foreign policy for more than half a century – and does so while excluding the public from the decision-making process.

The choice between East and West, that many in the opposition have already made a focal point of their electoral campaign, is also easily grasped through the Paks deal. The Fidesz government has fought for independence from the West and its institutions only to hand it over to Moscow. It also abandoned the Western procedures - public and professional debate, open tenders, transparency, and competition.  The government has instead implemented what seems to be one man’s decision for the benefit of few; much like in Putin’s kleptocracy. It is the very first tangible step in Mr Orbán’s Eastern opening – and it already reveals much of its nature.

The opposition should not parrot the Fidesz party’s cynicism in its relation to voters. As self-proclaimed democrats, they should consider their electorate a mature one, open to reasoning. And they should reason well.  Criticizing the details of the deal, about which one can only speculate, will not make for a credible argument. This seemed to be the case at a the opposition rally on February 1st, but it is not too late to change the opposition parties’ approach to the nuclear energy deal from arguing over assumption to facts.

Five- and six-year-old quotes from the Fidesz party’s top leaders, arguing, for example, that ‘relations with Russia have always meant a choice of values’, illustrate the party’s and its leaders’ political opportunism well. Through the ideological contradictions of this nuclear deal, the very substance of the regime’s deceit becomes visible. Moreover, the secrecy surrounding the whole issue could trigger indignation. The opposition needs to get on top of it.

The article was first published on the Hungary 2014 blog on February 3.

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