The Civil EU Presidency has started! Civil society organisations have launched a week-long series of events to address issues that were left out of the official programme of the Hungarian EU Presidency. Their priorities are democracy, solidarity, and green transition.

Democracy and civil society have a two-way relationship.

One the one hand, civil society through its diverse roles is an important contributor to upholding and improving democracy: its organisations (CSOs) act as channels and facilitators of citizen engagement, participation and activism, help educate the younger generations and provide services to vulnerable groups so that they can too practice and enjoy the fundamental and human rights that are due to all of us.

On the other, civil society needs a democratic enabling environment to thrive, composed of a stable and beneficial legislation, transparent and unbiased financing, structured dialogue with public institutions and a positive political atmosphere, among others.

The next few days will be all about the elections, and as a CSO it is particularly important that we use the right voice if we want to communicate about the elections. We want to maintain our credibility and reach our target audience with relevant and up-to-date content, while not making our message either forced or didactic.

The outbreak of war in Ukraine has shocked us all. We stand in solidarity with Ukraine and with all the people who have been dragged into war against their will. When the fighting started, our member organisations - along with many others - began to provide immediate assistance, and as the first refugees arrived, CSOs, informal aid groups and enthusiastic volunteers were already lining up to organise humanitarian work.

Ballot boxes are open from morning till night, we go, vote and wait for the results. But what happens to our votes then? Who counts our votes? What guarantees the transparency of the process? And what determines the result? What information do voters use to make their decisions? What can citizens do to ensure fair elections beyond their vote?

"This is the intention, and there is a fairly broad consensus among the actors", said Gergely Arató, programme coordinator of the six-party opposition alliance, at a research presentation of Political Capital and the Civilisation Coalition, in response to the question whether the situation of the civil sector will receive a separate chapter in the joint opposition programme. The same was promised by Tamás Mellár, co-founder of MMM.

After the anti-civil registration law, the Court of Justice of the European Union has also found the law threatening civilians helping refugees with prison to be contrary to EU law. In recent years, several stigmatising and restrictive laws have been passed to make the work of CSOs impossible. However, since the rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union, it is clear that the will to help cannot be restricted by legislation.

This briefing, prepared by Amnesty International provides a review of the impact of the law restricting Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) adopted in Hungary in 2017, that requires civil society organizations receiving support from foreign and international sources to register as “foreign-funded”. Amnesty International urges the Hungarian Parliament to repeal or substantially amend the LEXNGO and calls on the government and Parliament to reject the adoption of any new measures that unduly restrict NGO activity or that impose discriminatory or unjustified restrictions on the right to seek, receive and utilise funding from foreign or international sources, as mandated by the CJEU, whether through additional restrictive mandatory registration or any other type of harassment.