Hungary’s friends in need

Illustration by Andrzej Zaręba

His Facebook posts were evidence of how successful this co-operation was from the Hungarian perspective and proof that when it came to the pandemic the Fidesz government took matters into its own hands. For the very same reason Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also welcomed some of the deliveries in person.

Overall, there was only one narrative. It derived from the official Hungarian foreign policy doctrine implemented since 2013, known as Keleti Nyitás (which in English means “opening to the East”). It assumes that during a crisis, Hungary is ensured access to necessary equipment and supplies. Indicatively, nobody asked about the political price for this “insurance policy”. Yet its importance is marked by such events as the recent 17+1 summit during which Orbán participated. Interestingly, while the president is formally the head of state, it is the prime minister who attends strategic meetings. Thus, during the summit it was Orbán who praised Xi Jinping and thanked China for its assistance to Hungary during the pandemic.

Corona diplomacy

This “assistance”, also known as COVID diplomacy, is in fact a form of transaction and not voluntary service. Specifically, during the initial phase of the pandemic, when things were still pretty rough, Hungary purchased several hundred respirators from China. Thanks to that, within a few weeks it became the country with the highest number of respirators in the world per capita. This fact was presented to the public as an illustration of the government’s success and evidence of its effectiveness. The EU, in turn, was depicted as unable to secure anything for its member states. In time, however, it turned out that the cost of these Chinese respirators was so high that the Hungarian state had no choice but to start selling some of them.

In parallel, the authorities decided again to reassure the public that everyone was guaranteed access to medical equipment and the state was well prepared to cope with the crisis. Yet the official rhetoric did not find its ground in reality, especially when the second and third waves hit the country. Hungary started recording high death numbers and ended up with one of the highest death tolls in the world. Despite this and with Chinese equipment at their disposal, the authorities decided to increase their influence in the region. Their first step was in the Balkans. Hungary transferred aid to Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and the Bosnian Republika Srpska.

As part of Hungary’s corona diplomacy, the prime minister and minister of foreign affairs paid a number of official visits to different Balkan states last year. During one of them, the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, said that, in difficult times, Serbia can only count on Hungary, while the EU provides no help. Interestingly, the former Hungarian ambassador to the EU, Olivér Várhelyi, is the current EU Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement.

In addition, Hungary also offered assistance to countries with a Hungarian minority and which, before the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary. Indicatively, when we read the official statement issued by the Hungarian ministry of foreign affairs and foreign trade in this regard, we see that no names of states are used. Instead the document mentions former geographic regions of the Kingdom of Hungary, which is a deliberate revisionist manoeuvre. Thus, the names of places where the Hungarian government sent assistance are presented as Transylvania, Upper Hungary (which is today’s Slovakia), Vojvodina (which is today’s Serbia), Slavonia (today’s Croatia) and the Mura region (today’s Slovenia). Offering assistance to these regions is interpreted as an obligation stipulated by the Hungarian Constitution, which provides a mandate to the Hungarian government to take responsibility for Hungarians outside its borders. This assistance was offered to representatives of the Hungarian minority living in other states, but it bypassed these states’ official authorities. Interestingly, assistance was not sent to the Zakarpattia region, located in today’s Ukraine.

First in line

The implementation of the vaccination rollout in Hungary began on December 26th 2020, when the first delivery of EU-contracted vaccines arrived. The government’s ambition was that Hungary would be the first country in the EU to start the rollout. Activities in Hungary started at least 12 hours prior to the agreed date of commencement of the vaccination rollout.

Importantly, however, the Hungarian authorities started negotiations on vaccine deliveries even before manufacturers declared their availability. In an interview with public radio Kossuth last August, Orbán declared that Hungary had signed a contract for five million vaccine doses. At that time, there was no information regarding their source. On the same day the Russian Federation announced it had produced an effective COVID vaccine. One might wonder whether the contract Orbán announced back then was the purchase of the Russian vaccine, Sputnik V. From what we know now, however, we can say most likely not. It was probably the Chinese Sinopharm of which Hungary first ordered five million doses.

On November 5th 2020 Szijjártó announced information about Hungary’s contract to procure the Sputnik V vaccine. This was the second vaccine the government purchased from outside the EU. Since then we can observe two vaccine lobbies operating within Hungary. While Orbán has become Sinopharm’s main ambassador, Szijjártó has become a lobbyist for Sputnik V. In these roles, both politicians have been commenting on the vaccine contracts and welcoming the deliveries at Budapest airport. In the meantime, a Hungarian military A330-200 Cargo Airbus, operated by WizzAir, started to run flights from Hungary to China and Russia.

From the outset, one could spot that, in the official government rhetoric, there was some strong doubt about the EU vaccine supplies. A narrative was built to prepare Hungarians for receiving the vaccines from other sources than the EU. What was this argumentation based on? Szijjártó, for example, stated that vaccines have no nationality and it does not matter which of them to use, as the main goal is to hinder the spread of COVID-19. He was recorded as saying: “in our childhood, no one was interested whether the vaccine was from the East”. This was followed with a rhetorical question: “Does anyone really think that China or Russia would intentionally vaccinate their citizens with a bad or defective product?” Finally, the slogans of the vaccination rollout programme – “vaccine is life” and “every life counts” – were created and endorsed by Orbán.

Politics over health

Yet the truth is that at the moment of concluding the vaccine contracts with China and Russia, the Hungarian authorities had no information on the effectiveness of these vaccines. While in the EU the vaccine approval process is carried out by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), in Hungary it is handled by the National Institute of Pharmacy and Nutrition (Országos Gyógyszerészeti és Élelmezés-Egészségügyi Intézet, OGYÉI). This organisation is responsible for the approval of the Russian Sputnik V and the Chinese Sinopharm for use in Hungary. Its final decisions were made in late January and early February of this year.

Government information regarding the authorisation of the “eastern” vaccines showed that the decision of their use was not made by OGYÉI but the prime minister and the minister of foreign affairs and foreign trade. Emergency regulations granted Szijjártó, and not Miklós Kásler (who is the minister of human resources responsible for health), the authority to decide on the use of vaccines. Seemingly tensions emerged between OGYÉI and Szijjártó when it became clear that regardless of OGYÉI’s decision, Szijjártó would allow both “eastern” vaccines to be used in Hungary, which was justified on political grounds.

While sick with COVID-19 and in isolation, Szijjártó gave an interview to the Russian-sponsored propaganda channel RT. He spoke about Hungary’s willingness to buy the Russian vaccine, emphasising its high effectiveness. Szijjártó also pointed out that part of the production could take place in Hungary (an idea that was never repeated again). However, in regards to Sputnik V, the truth is that there has been much ungrounded information spread around, which was contradictory. On December 31st 2020, the spokesman of the office of the prime minister, Gergely Gulyás, announced that Sputnik V would not be imported to Hungary. The reason given was a lack of production capacity of the Russian manufacturer. However just 20 days later, a short film was shared on Facebook where the minister informed OGYÉI staff that he was in Russia inspecting the facility where the vaccine was being produced.

The film suggested that the decision on whether Sputnik V would be approved would be made within 48 hours. And indeed, on January 22nd, Szijjártó, who flew to Moscow to negotiate the terms of a new gas contract, began his visit by announcing the approval of Sputnik V for use in Hungary. He then thanked the Russian minister of health for such fruitful co-operation. In the following weeks, Hungarian authorities demanded a disclosure of the terms of the agreement between the EU and vaccine manufacturers. At the same time, the Fidesz government disclosed the contracts it had entered into. In their language it was stipulated that all the consequences of using Sputnik V were to be borne by the Hungarian state. The Chinese Sinopharm, in turn, was purchased by an intermediary, a Hungarian offshore company.

On January 15th 2021, new information emerged that the Hungarian government had signed an agreement for one million Chinese Sinopharm vaccines. Three days later, just after 8:30am, a press release was issued by the Hungarian Press Agency in which the head of OGYÉI, Ferenc Lukács, stated that the Sinopharm vaccine is produced under safe conditions and in an advanced facility. He added that the effectiveness of the vaccine requires further research. In fact Lukács made this statement during his stay in Beijing, where he visited the vaccine-producing factory. At that time, it was finally agreed that the order of Sinopharm was five million doses, while for Sputnik V it was two million. However, since both vaccines require two doses, they would vaccinate 3.5 million Hungarians (out of a total population of 9.7 million). In the third week of March, the OGYÉI approved two more vaccines not accepted by the EMA: the Chinese CanSino and India’s Covishield. It was announced that, for logistical reasons, these vaccines would not be administered in Hungary. Yet a similar declaration was made on the last day of the year by Gulyás regarding the Sputnik V orders.

Manipulations

Sputnik V has been administered to Hungarians since February 11th 2021 while Hungary began rolling out Sinopharm jabs on February 24th. Moreover, Hungary’s use of the eastern vaccines goes beyond its own public health care. Szijjártó is known to have personally assisted the then Slovak Prime Minister, Igor Matovič, in obtaining vaccines from Russia. Nevertheless, information on the effectiveness of Sputnik V and Sinopharm were lacking for some time. Data were first published in late April which included an analysis of the effectiveness of vaccines used in Hungary. The main message of the report was that more people fell ill and twice as many died after receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech jabs than those who received Sputnik V or Sinopharm.

After having analysed these data, Katalin Karikó, a Hungarian professor affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine and one of the founders of the mRNA technology, wrote that the government’s evidence was biased and even manipulated. The report did not show any differences between the timing of the administration of individual vaccines. For example, the first vaccine administered in Hungary was the Pfizer one, followed by AstraZeneca. Also, the data presented by the government on vaccine-related deaths included both the total of those who died after the second dose and those who died from other pre-existing conditions. For Sinopharm and Sputnik V this information was not provided at all. The timing of the rollout of “eastern” vaccines explains why they were not administered in nursing homes – one of the first places to receive vaccines.

As a result, pro-government media could report that the Chinese and Russian vaccines were more effective than what they referred to as the “American Pfizer”. Clearly this kind of narrative resembled communist propaganda. In fact, the entire campaign of importing personal protective gear and vaccines from Russia and China was not accompanied by any critical voices. This is the situation in the Hungarian media space, which is dominated by pro-government outlets. There is no room for uncomfortable questions.

To make matters worse, a law on counteracting the pandemic was passed in May 2020, which includes penalisation for spreading disinformation about the pandemic. As a result, any article or media story which questions the government’s COVID-19 policy can be labelled disinformation. And the reach of independent sources is much smaller than pro-government media, which now includes around 500 press outlets nationwide. Independent journalists have been banned from entering COVID-19 hospitals and medical personnel are banned from speaking to the media.

Hungary’s pandemic policy has demonstrated, once again, its strong slant towards the East – both to China and Russia. As a result, Hungary quickly gained access to much needed personal protection gear and vaccines while the rest of the EU struggled behind. At the same time, it is difficult to fully assess and predict the political consequences of this approach. It is probable that Hungary will pay a price for it in the near future. There is no doubt that one of Fidesz’s goals is to prepare for next year’s parliamentary elections in which the dominant narrative will be that the government has effectively handled the pandemic.

Translated by Iwona Reichardt

Dominik Héjj is a senior analyst with the Institute of Central Europe in Lublin specialising in Hungary-related issues. He is also editor-in-chief of www.kropka.hu, a Polish website devoted to Hungarian politics.

COVID-19, Hungary, vaccines, Viktor Orban