The Ökotárs Foundation, a liberal Hungarian NGO network, has announced it will distribute €20 million in Norway Grants within Hungary.
The EEA and Norway Grants are financial mechanisms through which Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein support EU member states, aiming to “reduce economic disparities, reinforce democratic values, and enhance bilateral cooperation.” Since 2013, the Ökotárs Foundation has received an estimated €25–30 million through these channels—potentially more when including funds they’ve managed as intermediaries.
Balázs Orbán, the political director of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, reacted to the news on X, saying:
At this point, I would just ask whether it is normal for a foreign country to “give” Hungary the money it pays to access the Hungarian market by financing a liberal political campaign with which they try to brainwash the people living here?
Ökotárs defines its mission as promoting a “democratic, sustainable and equitable society” built on civic participation. Its funding history, however, reveals more about what those phrases mean to the organization: Historically, it received financial support from U.S.-based liberal sources like the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as from George Soros’ globalist-progressive Open Society Foundations. Today, its largest backers include the European Commission’s Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) program and the Norway Grants.
The NGO has previously supported initiatives to strengthen LGBT awareness and legal empowerment, administered the CERV-funded program “Protecting and Promoting EU Values in Hungarian Civil Society,” and partnered with the U.S. Embassy—under former progressive activist-ambassador David Pressman—to fund 15–40 ‘independent’ local and national news outlets and train citizens in ‘media literacy.’
“Couldn’t we use it to support, say, the renovation of a hospital? To put it in a way that voters on all sides agree on,” Balázs Orbán said. “What if we, Hungarians, government and opposition voters, together asked the good Norwegians to support the modernization of a Hungarian hospital with this amount instead of what they are planning now? “
