“What this means for MCC Brussels is, at this juncture, difficult to unravel,” he continued. “We are looking at a Kafkaesque situation, where the rules, the process, and ultimately the consequences are becoming increasingly opaque.” He pointed out that MCC could potentially continue as a private foundation.
Last month, Orbán’s former Political Director Balázs Orbán (no relation) announced he was stepping down as chair of the board of trustees at MCC Hungary, accusing the new government in Budapest of targeting “non-liberal civil society.”
The news of the dissolution of MCC in Hungary comes at a difficult time for the Brussels outfit, which was suspended from the EU’s transparency register last month, making it harder for staffers to access EU institutions and policymakers.
A group of 50 MEPs, from the right-wing Patriots for Europe, Europe of Sovereign Nations, and European Conservative and Reformists groups, have written to the European Commission to call for a “full written justification for the suspension” of MCC from the transparency register. They say in a letter that the think tank “provided a healthy challenge to the mainstream consensus in Brussels on a wide range of issues.”
One potential source of new funding could be the U.S. Earlier this year, officials from Washington traveled to Europe with an eye to providing cash to “like-minded,” MAGA-friendly think tanks.
Gabriel Gavin contributed reporting.