STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Some other news: The European Union has been struggling to make sure its members stay solvent. Now, the EU is working to make sure one of its members, Hungary, stays democratic. The prime minister of the former Soviet bloc country was a dissident during the communist era. Now he is amassing new powers, and the EU has put him on notice to stop. NPR's Eric Westervelt reports from Budapest.
ERIC WESTERVELT, BYLINE: Veteran broadcaster Gyorgy Bolgar hosts one of the most popular shows in Hungary. It's a daily news call-in show on Klubradio, a left-leaning station with more than 200,000 listeners.
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UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: (Foreign language spoken)
WESTERVELT: Bolgar gets a daily earful from ordinary Hungarians upset with Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose conservative Fidesz Party has a commanding two-thirds majority in parliament. Bolgar and many of his listeners fear Orban is pushing the country backward.
GYORGY BOLGAR: Limiting the media, limiting the judiciary, limiting the scope of the constitutional court. It's limiting democracy. We are not yet Putin's Russia. We are not a dictatorship. But we are on a road which is clearly leading us toward some kind of a dictatorship or autocracy.
WESTERVELT: Bolgar and the rest of the privately-owned Klubradio may soon go silent. One of only remaining independent broadcast news outlets in Hungary recently lost out to an all-music station, when the license came up for renewal. Members of the newly-established media authority, which made the decision, are all Orban loyalists.
More worrying than the media crackdown for the European Union is Hungary's new constitution, which took effect January 1. Yesterday, the European Union's executive arm said aspects of Hungary's new constitution violate EU law and treaties. The EU has serious questions about the new central bank law, which gives the Hungarian government control over naming top bank officials.
The EU also has concerns about the independence of a new data protection authority, and about the forced early retirement of hundreds of judges who are set to be replaced by ruling party loyalists. That raises serious questions about the independence of the judiciary.
ZOLTAN KOVACS: We are not selling any kind of secret, you know, or doing tricks. We are just using the mandate we were given.
WESTERVELT: Government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs says he's confident the new constitution will stand up to EU scrutiny. He says the government will fully cooperate. Kovacs says Fidesz is simply fulfilling an election pledge to reform Hungary, after decades of failed communist rule and, more recently, eight years of what he calls corrupt socialist rule.
KOVACS: We are going to have a completely new set up. We are rebooting the system, so this is a major system update. And we are completely confident that this new constitutional system is really coming up or standing up to all European and world standards.
WESTERVELT: But Benedek Javor, a member of parliament from the Politics Can Be Different Party, says voters were never told during the campaign that a reboot would mean draconian restrictions and changes to basic structures of democracy.
DR. BENEDEK JAVOR: They didn't know that Fidesz was going to give a new constitution, to introduce a flat tax, to cut social care system, or limiting the rights of the constitutional court. All these things was not even mentioned before the elections.
WESTERVELT: Former U.S. ambassador to Hungary Mark Palmer, worries Hungary is back-sliding toward one-party rule. Alarmed by the erosion of an independent media, Palmer has asked the U.S. to consider restarting Radio Free Europe's Hungarian service. He says it is no longer unthinkable that Hungary could be kicked out of the EU.
MARK PALMER: I believe that is a real prospect. I mean the single greatest achievement of the European Union in the field of democracy was, of course, was to bring these countries that had been dictatorships into the democratic world. But that process isn't unidirectional; if a country abandons its democratic principles and practices, it will be expelled.
WESTERVELT: Budapest now has one month to respond to the EU's concerns. If Hungary ignores the requests to change the constitution, the European Commission can send the case to the European Court of Justice. But the EU has another way to pressure Hungary: The EU and the IMF are currently withholding a $25 billion loan Hungary desperately needs to remain solvent.
Eric Westervelt, NPR News, Budapest.
INSKEEP: And just in the last little while, we've had indications the prime minister may be responding to that pressure. He sent a letter, according to the AP, saying he will, quote, "modify the relevant legislation." We'll bring you more as we learn it. It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News.