 Good afternoon everybody, you're all very welcome indeed to the Irish Institute for International and European Affairs in Dublin. My name is John O'Brennan, I'm delighted to host today's event, and we are delighted to welcome our guest speaker, Professor Michael Ignatius. In a moment I'll formally introduce Michael just before I do a word on the format for today's event. Michael will speak to us for about 20 minutes or so, after that we're going to have plenty of time for questions and answers. If you would like to ask a question of Michael, you just have to use the Q&A function on Zoom, and I will then relay those questions to Michael. A reminder that today's event is on the record that is both the contribution from Michael and the Q&A. And so to introduce our guest speaker, Michael Ignatius needs little introduction. He is Professor of History at the Central European University in Vienna. For his sins, a former politician. More recently, he was rector of the Central European University in Budapest, and there is hardly anybody thus better placed to talk about today's theme of illiberal democracy and why it matters for university for free speech, and so on. Michael has such a distinguished record as an academic. Some of the books that he wrote in earlier phases of his career are books that I still read and use. I teach ethnic conflict, for example, and I use that wonderful book Blood and Belonging, which he wrote in the mid 1990s. Another book, The Lesser Evil, which focuses on political ethics and why they matter. His latest book on consolation, finding solace in dark times. So we are delighted truly to welcome Michael to the Institute and I look forward to hearing what he has to say about this hugely important topic and I invite him now to take the floor, Michael. Thank you, John. It's great to be in Dublin even kind of digitally. It's one of my favorite cities. I'd also like to give a little shout out to Irish diplomacy if I can. Ireland beat Canada to a seat on the Security Council and that came as a mighty big shock in Ottawa, but I want to raise my hat to the skill and sophistication of Ireland's representation overseas. I've also got some terrific representatives in Central and Eastern Europe and I don't know whether Ambassador Pat Kelly who is your ambassador in Hungary is watching but if he is. Thank you you were a great friend to the university and tremendous representative of Ireland so let me get to the topic at hand, the liberal democracy and threats to academic freedom in Europe. I have three questions. One is, why did the Eastern European transition as a whole, end up in a liberal democracy in at least two places. Why did a liberal democracy then target universities. And what does the future hold for democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. Let's go back to the transition, first of all, in 1989. The transition was supposed to do kind of three things was supposed to move from closed to open societies and that meant open markets, open borders free markets and a free press. It also meant secondarily, a political transition from single party police states to multi party political competition. And the third geo strategic implication was in some ways the most important which is to move the whole region from alignment with the Soviet Empire into alignment with EU and NATO. And by 2004 as you know that realignment was complete Eastern Europe was in the European Union. And so then the question becomes why did enlargement not consolidate liberal democracy in that region. I think there are a couple of reasons why not one of them is the simple weight of political culture in the region the authoritarian heritage in Hungary. You know it's not just Qatar and the Communist Party, after 56 or from 45 onwards. It's also Admiral Horthy in the 20s and 30s and 40s a deeply anti Semitic authoritarian regime. Now in Poland it's Tito and former Yugoslavia. These are, these are, this is a region with a deep experience of single party rule led by a single, single strong man. That's one heritage the other heritage is even some ways more disturbing and that's the heritage of ethnic cleansing. Now 600,000 Hungarian Jews are exterminated between spring 1944 and summer 1944 terrible ethnic cleansing in in Poland and it also in the former Yugoslavia so these countries come out of the war in 1945 having the had their pluralistic culture eradicated by Hitler or by Stalin. And so they become mono ethnic states with essentially a mono ethnic political culture that is a culture that's not habituated to accommodating plural pluralism ethnic and religious difference. I think another reason why the transition doesn't go right has to do with the failure of the transition elites themselves. I mean see you was formed in 1991 to train that transition elite, they're the people who wrote the new constitutions they're the people who privatize the economy. They're the people who set up multi party democracy, but by 2005 and 2006 many of these transition elites were a too small to consolidate themselves into a permanent ruling block. And I think they also had become corrupt and were there for vulnerable to an attack from the right wing. What happened during the whole transition that people didn't see at the time as the emergence of a new counter elite. The transition elites were based in the, you know in Warsaw and in Belgrade in in Budapest, the counter elites were based in the countryside small town conservative unilingual most of the didn't speak any other language but their deeply anti cosmopolitan by instinct and Christian Catholic Protestant by by allegiance. And this counter elite begins to take the possibility of taking power and parties like Fidesz from Hungary or buns political formation, basically build their political support on this new counter elite. And when the counter elite begins to mobilize politically. It mobilizes on a kind of politics of resentment. One of the things that comes as a really disagreeable surprise I think to people who believe in EU enlargement it was how quickly that counter elite national elite began to resent the Brussels. And so, to a degree that must astound people in Ireland. There are people in Poland there are people in Hungary, who talk without apparent irony of Brussels being the new Moscow. What the counter elites don't like is that EU enlargement constrains the political systems and the sovereignty of these counter elites and so they, they don't like it. So instead of building consensus in favor of incorporation and a new European project, EU enlargement present tremendously strong resentment by local elites who didn't like the abridgment of their power. The factor I think which needs to be emphasized is how tough capitalism was when it came to Eastern Europe one one example is the ways in which Austrian and Swiss banks sold mortgages denominated in euros or in the Swiss currency to unsuspecting who then had never had a mortgage before and suddenly had were paid in Florence and had to pay them back in European currencies and quickly went underwater. And the crisis that this engendered in the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 is a central reason why fit as came to power they ran as a kind of anti capitalist. A nationalist program that said, you've been screwed excuse my language by the Western banks, we're going to take back control and make sure none of you go underwater. And this was something I think the transition elites were slow to realize and respond to when these counter elites take power and they fit as takes power in 2010, they took power in the name of the people. The people they were talking about were themselves the counter elite, and they immediately use political power and the legitimacy of majority rule to mount a major attack on counter majoritarian institutions counter counter majoritarian institutions include the courts, the media regulatory agencies, and the universities were not used by the way to thinking of universities as part of the Constitution of a liberal democracy but I do think they need to be thought of in that way, as one of the countervailing counter majoritarian powers that tries above all to keep the trade and ideas as honest as as it can be. And this is what a liberal democracy amounts to the use of majoritarian majority rule to attack the counter majoritarian limits on power in the name of we the people in the name of these ethnically homogeneous Hungarian Polish Serbian nations. There's less of this in the Czech Republic partly because the Maserichian interwar tradition was stronger. The Catholic Church was less strong, and the economy was more deeply and successfully integrated into the German economy so it's not a pattern across the whole whole of the region but this liberal democratic trend begins to take hold and democracy itself begins to be distorted. And the trends which begin before the migration crisis are exacerbated of course by the migration crisis of 2015 when suddenly there are a million desperate Afghans Syrians people from the Middle East at the railway station in Kellity and in Budapest flooding onto trains to get through to Austria and then to Germany. And the pivot crisis which I think accentuates and radicalizes all of these parties across the region. The ethnic states that had been turned mono ethnic by ethnic cleansing in in under Hitler and Stalin, simply don't have any cultural idea of a multicultural society that could absorb refugees. Many parties immediately understand this and Orban and Kaczynski and the Czechs and the Serbs all build a new ideological base to hold their support on the basis of opposition to mass migration from Muslim countries. They not only do that but they then turn migration into a sinister liberal cosmopolitan plot in which Western Europe wants to impose its multi ethnic model on an Eastern Europe with different cultural traditions. The liberal cosmopolitan plot fueled by sinister capitalist forces like George Soros and other well funded liberals who want to impose a multicultural society of mass immigration on societies that have never had that experience so it's a threat to the nation it's a threat to the language it's a threat to the survival of these countries. I think it's impossible to overstate how useful the migration crisis was in tuning up this this ideology. He's in this period that my university and see you comes under attack. See you was founded by George Soros, and as part of Orban selection campaign in 2018 he decides to go after this transition institution we were there to help in the transition to become an internationally recognized graduate school in the social sciences if you allow a 30 second straight pitch we'd love to see more Irish students at the university it's a great place to do serious advanced research and get a good master. That's the end of, end of publicity pitch. But the university was the best university in Hungary, Orban attacks it as a symbol of this liberal cosmopolitan plot against the national integrity of Hungary. We fought it. It's important to remember that the height of the crisis, 80,000 people march past our doors chanting free universities in a free society. So you mustn't come out of this talk thinking Orban speaks for every Hungarian or Kaczynski speaking for every poll there's substantial confusion inside these societies to the trends I'm describing but we decided we couldn't fight a government in perpetuity and so that's why I'm now talking to you from Vienna and the university has gone from strength to strength and is now in, now in Vienna. This revolution that Orban has led since 2010 has become steadily more radical, despite the fact that the European Court of Justice pronounced the expulsion of see you illegal under European law. Orban has basically effectively ignored the ruling and having thrown a liberal university accredited in the United States out of Hungary he's now brought in a new Chinese university from food on. So you have a new university which whatever else it's going to do will not teach empirical assessment of either the Chinese or the Hungarian regime in its classroom so, and this entry of a Chinese university into a European member is a source I think of some legitimate concern and gives us a pointer to where Eastern Europe as a whole may be going in the future. I want to, I want to also focus on the ideological construct that liberal democracy amounts to its nationalist, it's conservative, it's Christian, it's anti liberal and so attacks on gender studies, gay rights. The decision by the regime, scanlessly of teaching people about homosexuality in schools has been banned, because that is equated with get this pedophilia and unbelievable stuff. This construct is not now just Eastern European phenomenon. American conservatives are trekking to up to Budapest to see Victor Orban, Vice President Pence various right wing commentators, because this ideological construction of majoritarian democracy, nationalist conservative Catholic anti gay anti gender equality. And the next generation is, it seems to me the new face of 21st century right wing conservatism and as a liberal what is interesting to me is that this is a conservatism unlike the conservatism that we have seen in the 20th century. This is a conservatism if I dare say so of de Valera than the conservatism of Adonara the conservatism of the gasbury the conservatism of Churchill, we're all constitutional, and in a sense, if reluctantly open to the world this is a new kind of it's of interest I think to to to you because it's not simply now confined to central Eastern Europe, it's gone global. One of the other features of this authoritarian conservatism is that it doesn't treat liberals as adversaries but as enemies and it treats politics not as a battle of ideas but as a combat to the death. It accepts no limits to the authority of of its leader, and it's a threat to democracy, because it models politics as a battle to the death, because it treats its enemies, its opponents as enemies, and because in some sense and this is the issue with with Orban, it may not be able to to allow itself to lose hungry faces an election in May 2022 and the critical issue is whether he will accept a democratic verdict in which he loses power. And so, whether Orban will accept democratic defeat is at this moment uncertain. It's easy to think that all of this is very far away from from Ireland but this is a direct threat to the to the geostrategic bet that Ireland has made since it entered the European Union. And there is no more passionate European pro European state than Ireland in many ways because you've done so well under the EU, but the EU is now, I think genuinely threatened by this stubborn relentless resistance of Poland and hungry to the basic norms of of of a liberal democratic state, and it's saturated with hypocrisy. Orban runs against boot against Brussels Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday and Friday and caches the EU checks your taxpayers dollars and euros on Saturday and Sunday. But the opposition to European integration by these regimes is is existential because they're essentially alien to the democratic culture of Europe. On the one hand you have very strong opinion poll support for European membership in Poland and in Hungary, but on the other hand, these are regimes, these are countries led by regimes who live by sustaining conflict with Brussels and the model that they are now exporting to the world. Conservative Catholic Christian, anti gay anti liberal anti constitutional at the at the limit against countermajoritarian balances which make a liberal democracy liberal seem to be now to have a global reach that I think ought to be of concern to everybody. I'm listening to me today it just says something that we've always known which is democracy's fragile democracy is not a stable irrevocable achievement and on the European landmass. This is a vision of democracy majority rule backing a single party state that could have a long life in Europe and a sinister life. But I've done a little bit to awaken you to the dimensions of the challenge and I'm looking at my watch I think I've done about 1520 minutes and I I'll stop there and hope that we can have a great discussion and thank you for for your attention. Thank you very much. Indeed, Michael. I have questions that are coming in but if I could indulge my position, firstly to ask you. Given what has happened to the opposition in Hungary recently that they have finally it seems managed to overcome the fragmentation and the divisions and we now have a more or less unified opposition going into an election for the first time since 2010. Does that make it likely that even if the election is free but unfair and or ban comes under pressure. How likely is it first of all that the opposition can win if we put aside the question of how Orban and his acolytes react and how likely is it that we might see the end of Fidesz as the governing party in Hungary. I have a question john and I, I love being placed in a position where I've become an expert on Hungarian politics if there's a Hungarian watching this they're tearing their hair out, and quite rightly, what the hell is this Canadian know about my country. But I, you know, I am married to a Hungarian I've lived there a while and I am passionately engaged in it. Look, I think there is a chance they can win I don't think there's any doubt they've, they're united in ways that the opposition that they haven't been for a rather conservative candidate who has the credibility of having, you know, dislodge fit as from one is one of its fiefdoms in a small town. He has had the guts to go at fit as head to head in, in, in, in, in provincial Hungary. He has been smart in bringing people together the opposition politicians in Budapest have lined up behind him. So that's pretty good. I think this audience needs to understand that, according to the political scientists I talked to. The opposition has to win by five clear percentage points of the popular vote, in order to get a bear majority in parliament. This is because the system is gerrymandered against them. So they have to win big, or they're not going to win at all. That's problem number one, problem number two is that the Constitution is so gerrymandered now that you have to have a two thirds majority to do anything substantial. The opposition is seriously tempted to, if they win the election to alter the Constitution in order to enable them to pass the legislation they want and here's the risk. If they do that and alter the Constitution, then Orban would, having lost the election would suddenly take to the streets and say, This is a threat to democracy, you know, you're doing what you accuse me of doing so. And he has gone to the streets before when he was in opposition he could do so again. And there is some worry that the transition here, even if he accepts defeat could be extremely rocky and difficult and so I'm aware that there are discussions in the opposition at the moment how to meet this challenge prudently, and I hope they will meet it prudently. So it's not just, it's not just a question of will he give up power peacefully, he might give up power but then, you know, come back later with a essentially an extra constitutional challenge to the new government led from the streets, and any politics that ends up in the streets is frankly dangerous. And Budapest 56 was politics in the streets and did not. It was not a pretty sight so I think we all ought to be concerned about that and pray that both sides in this show the wisdom to keep this within constitutional paths. A second question from Alexander Conway who is a researcher at the Institute, reminding us that this morning Germany formally said goodbye to Angela Merkel. Chancellor Schultz has been sworn in Alexander asks whether Professor Ignatius agrees with the view of Matthias Matthias and Dan Kellerman in a recent piece in foreign policy, which essentially argues that Merkel and Germany enabled the developing democracies of Orban and Kaczynski over that period since 2010 in the case of Orban 2015, in the case of PIS in Poland. So does he think that the end of the Merkel era, and the advent of a new SPD led coalition in Berlin will change the fundamentals in the German, Hungarian relationship in particular, and the EU's approach to both Hungary and Poland. That's a, that's a great question. I think there's no doubt that she enabled I think what I would say is that she unwillingly enabled. And here's why she enabled enabled these regimes. First in the interest of stability. Second, I think there's no question that German industry has really substantial interests in, in Hungary, the car business, they use Hungary and Poland as a particularly hungry as low wage assembly platforms and so their substantial German selling Merkel just don't, don't tip this over, but there's something more fundamental than that, which I learned, because I went during the CU crisis I went to Berlin I talked to Merkel's people I talked to the president of the Republic I talked to everybody. And to slowly begin to understand is Germany's extreme reluctance to bang the table and become the bad cop for for Europe. And then you understand a second thing which is that nobody in Europe wants to be told what to do by Berlin. I learned that in Copenhagen actually because I remembered thinking I was making a kind of clever remark you know, I, I, when, when people ask me how, how, how do I think the CU matter could be peacefully resolved I say, I imagine a conversation in which Angie and Emmanuel pick up the phone on Friday afternoon and say Victor we got Angie on the line here we're looking at the Euro budget and there's a $4 billion number on structural subsidies here and you know Victor it's really tough for us you know to to to sign off on this because our, our own domestic families are screaming at us and why are we giving all this money of these corrupt guys in Eastern Europe. And so, Emmanuel and I agree that there's some low hanging fruit here Victor which would be really helpful you know this little university just take it off the list and, and you know, sign up to the European public prosecutor a few other little low hanging fruit, and you'll get your 4 million but if you don't Victor, it's, we're going to. Okay, have a nice weekend. We'll call you Monday right. I told this in Copenhagen there was a chilly silence, which made me realize that what the Danes were thinking was God almighty if Berlin does that to Budapest they could do that to Copenhagen. This tells you something with a fundamental architecture the European project which is that it is a union of sovereign states, and in the final analysis, this is not a union that is going to push the sovereign prerogatives of a member state in any serious way and it's not just Berlin in other words it's it's the it's the whole construction and given Brexit that tendency to be risk averse and avoid infringing on sovereign progress is much more reinforced. I don't think it's a matter of Merkel's temperament, I think it's partly a matter of German reluctance, but it's about the fundamental architecture of this thing that you guys have signed up, up in and done such a good job I mean you've used. This is the classic example of a small country that's used Europe to massively leverage its international influence. It's been nothing but a positive relationship for you, but it's not the same way for other other nation states in Europe. And I see no way in which that structural dimension is is actually going to change. So I think there's going to be a kind of messy and pleasant little fudge on rule of law stuff. And I think that Europe will simply decide different strokes for different folks, it's the only way to keep this bicycle moving. They'll have a liberal democracy, you know to the east of Switzerland and they'll have liberal democracy to the West and that's the best we can do. And I think that's ultimately going to be very disruptive of the European project and let me tell you one further reason why which is it. I mentioned this business about the Chinese bringing the food on university into Budapest. That tells me that one of the ideas we've had about the European architecture is where else are they going to go right, you know, yeah, there's only one game in town and that's west to Brussels and to Europe, well, not necessarily anymore. China is a very significant player in this part of the world it could become increasingly important and, and I, I can imagine a scenario when in which under sufficient pressure, Orban Kaczynski and some other future guy would say, I don't need you guys. I've got belt and braces or whatever it's called I've got these long term loans. China is good for me. And the one thing about China is they don't give me a lecture what kind of domestic regime I run. So, I'm just saying this is a very much more unstable 21st century environment that I think we're used to I'm sorry to go on so long about the question but it's such a good one and it's absolutely the key to the whole whole issue. And it also prompts me to ask about your own experience as rector of CEU in your engagement with Brussels. There has been deep criticism from academic lawyers, especially of the European Commission in the way that it has handled Hungary and Poland. But the insistence on using dialogue in preference to proper meaty material sanctions is one that has only emboldened the autocrats further. Now, in the case of CEU Michael, did you feel that you had sufficient support from the commission in particular. You know, I met all these guys and all these people, you know, you couldn't go into Europe as office and she without her saying how much he believed in academic freedom and some of these other folks we met a lot of senior officials I was never short of rhetorical support. Everybody understood instantly that, you know, it was unconscionable that in a Europe of free peoples, a member state could actually expel a university from its from its borders. That's the kind of thing Lukashenko did with a university but you know Lukashenko Lukashenko right. So they understood it wasn't and it wasn't that they thought it was a marginal issue they thought it went to the heart of European values. The commission. The commission's chief instrument as your lawyers are saying is legal. You know they they prepared the legal briefs to the European Court of Justice that found in our favor, but the court found in our favor in a two and a half years. After we've been thrown out. So justice delayed in this case is justice denied. And so this recourse to legalism is is one source of weakness the other source is the law itself is weak. I think Irish folks need to understand that there, there isn't good law defending academic freedom and institutional autonomy in Europe they just isn't there's a lot of treaty there's a lot of commercial law. And the reason we won the case it at, at the European Court of Justice is that we were, we won on the basis that we're a commercial enterprise that, you know, was our commercial rights for violated and have nothing to do with academic freedom. And that's indicates that a, the resort to legalism is limited secondly, the legal the law you've got is inadequate. And third, the commission can't do kind of heavy politics that's for the council. And when the council gets down it's a bunch of politicians from member states who want an easy life and have got a short term. And we get through the six months of my pre presidency and we can, we can push it along. And, and, you know, in that setting, or Bonnie's one of the most experienced politicians there is with the departure or departure of Merkel he may be in fact the most senior politician at the table. He plays the game like a, you know, like a master. They think this guy is a, this guy is a bad guy but he's our guy, you know, he knows all the jokes he remembers our name he pats our backs. You know, and, and he's a extremely able politician. So he punches way about his way. And for that, and these are some of the reasons why the hammer never comes down and in my view the hammer will never come down on this guy. And ultimately what I think, and it's a general rule for Europe is when Europe is faced with authoritarian single party rule, the only solution is democratic change from within. And there's, there's absolutely nothing from the outside that in the end of the day matters a dam. And I learned that to my, my cost I, I'd thought that European institutions put sufficient pressure formal informal to save the institution, no way, no, no, no way at all. The only thing that will prevent will restore democracy in Hungary and in Poland are the actions of Hungarians and the actions of polls, and that's probably the way it should be. Yeah. And could you foresee a situation Michael where CEU actually returns substantially to Budapest in the future, if we have a new government new dispensation in Hungary, could you see that kind of return taking place. I think it's unlikely. I, well, let me be more precise, we will always have a presence in Budapest we have a presence now. We have a campus we have a library we have a democracy Institute. And we will maintain that what I don't think we'll do is any situation in which are accreditation depends on the whims of a Hungarian government, even one in the hands of the opposition. Because I simply don't have confidence in the, in the autonomy of the accrediting institutions that we would be required to, to work with whereas in Austria, you know, it's a, it's a classic European state where those things. Nobody puts their political thumb on the, on the, on the counter. We will stay in Budapest, but the core of our teaching operation, I think will be in Vienna forever. And the other thing is that Vienna is a is a terrific international center of learning and study so it's, it's very good, it's very positive for us. Yeah. I have a question here from Pat Kelly from the Department of Foreign Affairs who thanks you. Kind comments earlier. Michael asks, given the EU's post 2004 experience of accommodating new members such as Hungary and Poland. Do you think the EU should be cautious about further enlargement into the Western Balkans, or should we still see this as a necessary step to promote stability reconciliation and reform in a region which is still strategically important to Europe. Pat's asked a great question and I, I'm, I'm very much of two minds on the political side there is zero appetite for enlargement among the existing electorates of the 27 and that's just a fact. On the other side it's clear that unless the Western Balkans gets a political destination, they're going to go in some very weird directions and we already see that they're going in weird directions. And it's not merely that they'll go in weird directions but a kind of vacuum will emerge in which the Chinese the Russians and the Turks above all will begin to, you know, create their clients of influence and interest and that is not good for the long stability of Southern Southern Europe so at the moment the game the game that Europe is playing is. Yes, but not now holding the, the bright shiny bubble of eventual enlargement to keep these places politically stabilized, but I just don't know how long this can be. This can be done. And, and the trouble with enlargement. If you just take a place like Serbia Serbia is a terrific place. I, you know, I, Yugoslav war is a part, you know, part beside, you know, some wonderful people there but it's it's it's another party state it's it's it's not a great regime to negotiate with so enlargement would would have to be very demanding of Serbia would have to be very demanding of these other regimes they would have to really meet some pretty good tests on corruption on democratic legitimacy and I just think they're nowhere near that at the moment and and and they can't come in until they've cleared those bars so. I, I think the positive side is to do everything that the EU can to in improve the free marketing goods improvement in infrastructure. And the liberalization to get some of these huge volumes of unemployed people are just dying to to work in Europe get them in and get them coming in and out on a on a on a sort of guest worker basis. I think there's a lot that Europe can do. You know, I cut my teeth on the Balkan Wars in the 90s and was there for nearly a decade and it was terrible for Europe to have. It was terrible for everybody for have so many people massacred and killed and deported in that period it's a it's a scarring memory for Europe and a shameful one. This was supposed to remember the year this was supposed to be in Europe's job they couldn't do it. I think Europe can now set out a roadmap in which infrastructure investment, people investment institutional reform, don't take the possibility of enlargement off the table but make it clear this is not going to happen until these people are genuinely and irrevocably liberalized. That gives them some perspective, but pretending it's not happening pretending it'll just go away if you ignore it as a recipe for disaster. One of the reasons that your book blood and belongings to resonate so much is that there is still deep fragility about Bosnia with the secessionist threats from Republic as Serbska recent events in Montenegro demonstrate the tensions within that polity and Kosovo Serbia remains a very, very difficult relationship as well. I have another question from Francis Jacobs who is the former head of the European Parliament representation in Ireland and a member of the Institute. Francis asks, apart from the opposition parties, what other countervailing forces might we point to in Hungary and in Poland. How strong is civil society and what are the views of younger Hungarians and Poles and of their diasporas and will those matter in creating change in the years ahead. That's another great question at my senses that civil society in Hungary is not as strong as we wouldn't like it to be it's very dependent on external support I know this because of the Society Foundation on which I used to sit as a board did a lot of funding it was very difficult because the minute you took OSF money were you know a George Soros puppet, you know this kind of stuff. But the very need for external support indicates a certain fragility in the civil society composition. The other factor, you know, all this region is is is out migration. I mean, you don't stay in Hungary if you, if you're unhappy or discontented or opposed to the regime you just get on a train and go to Vienna or Dusseldorf or, you know, Dublin even. And this isn't a perverse aspect of you enlargement that I don't think we anticipated which is that it. It's a kind of safety valve for these single party regimes. You don't like the place you leave and so five 600,000 Hungarians live in other parts of Europe. They remit income back but they come back to see their mums and dads in the summer. But their political force inside the country is is much is not is not terribly strong, although they do vote and the external vote will be important in the next election. Some of the same thing is also true in Poland which has huge out migration. And I think that's that's weak. The other the other thing to say, which I think is a sort of point about social science. Whenever you use the word civil society you always assume that civil society is somehow progressive. One of my colleagues, Bella Greskiewicz at the university has made the point which I think is extremely important. There's a right wing civil society, there's a conservative civil society. And it may be that the conservative civil society in Hungary and in Poland is much stronger than the liberal or progressive one that the civil society that strong and hungry is the church and it's been massively aided in by the urban regime. Ditto, obviously in Poland, the massive moral political emotional power of the Catholic Church is always to be respected but it's mostly pro pro regime. Because it was, you know, courageously heroically anti communist in in a previous period so there is a civil society but it's not necessarily on the side of, you know, progressive liberalism it's it, you know, and and you know, one of the enormous strengths of Polish society is the Catholic Church I'm not I'm not a believer but you just have to respect the immense moral prestige of this institution and hope that over time it will play a role in in orienting, pulling on a good path. I have another question from Dan O'Brien of the Institute. Dan asks, would non acceptance of an election outcome by a member state be a red line for the European Union and bring the very membership of Hungary into question. That's a terrific point and I hope to hell you're right. I absolutely agree that is if they're, that's a red line, and Europe would have to the Council of Ministers would have to say that, unequivocally, you lost. Goodbye. Don't show up to the next meeting on Tuesday, you're done we're working with the other guys. So, this would be a case where the Europe could suddenly play a very productive role in assisting a democratic transition simply by refusing to validate any form of opposition to a certified result. I think that's a very important point and I hope, I hope Europe will play that role and I certainly hope that any Irish diplomats or officials listening to this will file that away and they're in the back of their mind because I think that is that could be coming at us in in May 2022. So, connected to this Connor daily, who is a research fellow at Trinity College asks about the mechanics of the election, potentially, and he asks, what risk that Orban will borrow some of the very successful techniques employed by Putin's for example in their managed democracy in Russia, things like the exclusion of opposition candidates from participating in the election on trumped up grounds, falsification of election counts, ballot stuffing, the intimidation of state employees. Do you see evidence that things like that are in the offering Michael. And the last one, there's a very large public sector it's highly politicized very much under the control, you know, school teachers, primary school teachers. In the previous election 2018 there was some evidence that you know, people were told pretty clearly by their school principals you know hey, you know what side, your bread is buttered on and who butters it for you so don't do some stupid polls I think there's quite a lot of that very old traditional stuff which you've seen in lots of countries not just in Eastern Europe. I think the other element. Yes, I think they will reach into the Russian playbook but I think it's important to remember how globalized politics is I mean the, the 2018 Orban campaign was run by a conservative republican spin doctor in New York. It was he who decided let's make the whole campaign to be about George Soros for example. He gave Orban his, his electoral playbook so these regimes are very very sophisticated in their use of social media and their use of campaign advertising in their use of attack ads, the entire playbook of western politics that I knew when I was in politics is is is fully these places are not little provinces they are plugged into the latest black arts of with the advantage that they can also make use of the black arts of the Russians. So I think it'll all be in play, but I think there's a limit to how effective it can be because these, these techniques have been used for 10 years now people are kind of, there's a saturation effect. As much as anything it's the fact that he's simply been in power for 11 years people get fed up and tired of it. And so, I don't want to overdo this I think he could still win I think there's no question it's going to be very very close. And at the moment it seems to me that the opposition has the best chance in a decade, but that's about all I would say. On the question of terminology, the phrase illiberal democracy I just wanted to ask you briefly to perhaps unpack this. Is there a risk that when we use that term we kind of play on Orban's terrain because it presents this model as simply another type of Democratic structure, and that it has just as much legitimacy as the Canadian one or the Irish one. The Russians as I say referred to their model as a managed democracy. What we're really talking about here is surely autocracy and authoritarianism of a very familiar kind. I think that's absolutely right. Yanush Keisha wonderful political philosopher and hungry who's a colleague and friend says, we shouldn't be using a liberal democracy it's it's intrinsically a contradiction in terms. And your second point which is we shouldn't play on his terrain and when you use his lingo you're doing so I think that's I think that's right the problem the reason that I cling to it a little bit is the enormous problems of Democratic legitimacy to everything that Orban has done. Every time he's in a jam with Brussels with liberal opponents like me without. He says listen I won three damn elections. You know, I went out and one Farad Square. I have the confidence of the Hungarian people you do not. You do not represent anybody the attack on Soros is a attack based on Democratic legitimacy. It's a New York financier what what what, who do you, how many votes do you have you know. So, I agree with the point you're making john I think it's fundamental but you don't. If you simply call him another kind of authoritarian you're missing the crucial role of an idea of democracy in that's in his head and as in the heads of the of the people, he has very deep support because people say, he hears me, he listens to me, he understands me. He's the one who bumps my pension up every January, you know, I mean, it's, and, and so it is a kind of democracy. That's the problem. And I think you see this in the United States. This is where this is where this is this recurrent uprising in American political traditions against the counter majoritarian elements of their own Constitution is a very majoring feature of American democracy and it, it, it's not quite right to simply say these are just authoritarian populace know these people are claiming they are Democrats just not your kind of Democrats and and that's why I think I, I unwillingly use a liberal democracy. While I concede the very good point you're making. Thank you. We are drawing towards the end of our session here. I have one final question from our colleague, Dr ballish up or who is professor of European studies at Trinity College Dublin, and ballish asks, what do you think the leeway of the Hungarian opposition would be in the sphere of higher education. After the recent changes in the status of universities in Hungary which, as ballish points out essentially brings them under the control of the government. It wasn't just see you that was attacked of course it was the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and others. So what might the Hungarian higher education landscape look like do you think in a post fidez age. So to bring it back to the position it was in previously. Well there's a great deal of discussion everywhere in Hungary about whether some of the changes instituted by fit as are irreversible. And that will be a challenge for the regime, you know, public assets have been passed into private hands and property law makes it very difficult to unstitch that that would be one example. I think it's easier in the case of higher education to unstitch some of this stuff and hand it back. But clearly Hungary is going to need an entirely new institutional architecture to reestablish the autonomy of these institutions. It is let's be clear a state funded system so it's going to be autonomy within the con constraints of a state budget. The particular thing that I think ballish is referring to is that many of these universities have now been essentially privatized and given access to state assets like the revenues from the from the public oil company. I can see a way in which you could keep that going but you get it under some kind of new statute that makes it accessible to public and democratic control the real issue is that the the boards of trustees that run these institutions are all fit as plants. And one of the temptations for a incoming opposition regime is simply replace the bad guys with your guys and I think that's an absolute mistake I think it's going to be critical for the new regime if it succeeds to actually keep some of the. There are plenty of honest people who serve in fit as institutions and they should be deliberately kept to make the point that we want to create a Hungary in which these institutions have genuine autonomy from from power and whether the opposition can resist the transition to reward their friends and punish their enemies that's I think the key issue in the transition after May 2022 if they went. Thank you very much indeed Michael, we have come up to the hour so I am reluctant they're going to have to bring a fascinating conversation to a close. Thank you on behalf of the Institute thank you very much indeed for giving you not just are your time today but these hugely valuable insights from your own experience and extrapolating from the Hungarian to the European level so thank you very, very much indeed. Thank you also to the participants who have joined us on this call, almost 100 people like gather as an earlier point. Thank you all very much indeed thank you also for the really interesting questions so again thanks to our guest speaker, Michael and see everybody next time. Thank you very much indeed.