Hungary's former prime minister is threatening to withhold much-needed support for EU membership, writes Denis Staunton in Budapest.
Hungary's version of Big Brother had only been on air for a week when, to the delight of its producers, the contestants staged their first sex scene. Ratings soared but the National Radio and Television Authority was not amused and fined the TV2 broadcaster almost €25,000 for breaching its code.
Hungary's former prime minister, Mr Viktor Orban, is also suing Big Brother because one of the contestants described him as a "gypsy fascist". Mr Orban, who lost power in April to a centre-left coalition led by Mr Peter Medgyessy, has upset many Hungarians by attempting to set new conditions before Hungary joins the European Union.
He has warned that his Fidesz party will not support the constitutional changes needed for EU membership unless certain conditions are fulfilled, notably a prohibition on foreigners buying Hungarian land. Mr Orban also demands a 300 per cent increase of salaries in 2003, a package of subsidies for Hungarian enterprises and loans to farmers.
Mr Orban's threat matters because constitutional changes require a two-thirds majority and the government has only a 10-seat majority in the 386-seat parliament.
Dr Laszlo Kis, a political analyst at Budapest's Academy of Sciences, believes that Mr Orban's policy shift is a blatant attempt to win votes from the far-right in next month's local elections.
"He is taking an enormously high risk by playing with the fears of the people and capitalising on them in the interest of his own political ambition. He won't succeed. I'm absolutely sure he will get an enormously high punishment at the elections," he said.
Support for EU membership has always been higher in Hungary than in any other candidate country and some commentators suspect that Mr Orban is simply annoyed that he is unlikely to be the man to lead his country into the EU.
Prof Julius Horvath heads the department of international relations and European studies at the Central European University. A Slovak who speaks Czech and Polish as well as Hungarian, he maintains that any delay in enlargement would be a serious psychological blow to the people of the region. "For those Eastern Europeans who are very much pro-Western and were already thinking about joining western Europe in 1990, it seems to me that joining by 2005, 15 years later, is a political must. If enlargement is postponed by five or 10 years, maybe there would be some advantages in an economic sense but there would be an enormous loss in the political sense," he said.
Prof Horvath expects the Hungarian economy to grow by between 3 and 5 per cent each year for the next decade - not as fast as Ireland's economy has grown but enough to create a boom. He believes however that if EU enlargement is to succeed, it must be seen as a political project to unite both parts of Europe rather than an extension of the European market.
He suggests that one of the most useful consequences of EU enlargement could be deeper relationships between the candidate countries themselves.
"If you go onto the street and ask nine-year-old boys what soccer league they watch, they will know their domestic soccer league, their own first division and they know maybe the Spanish or the British or the German. But the boy in Warsaw doesn't know the first division in Hungary and vice versa. So typically we all look to the West and this is true of adults too. Maybe we're starting to respect each other more," he said.
Prof Horvath recalls visiting London in 1982 and being so enchanted by the range of books available at Foyle's that he stayed in the bookshop all day. More than 10 years after the collapse of communism, he remains delighted by the intellectual freedom that democratic change has brought and exudes optimism about Hungary's future.
"This is the feeling of the early 1990s but it has stayed with me. I feel that this is a great period for our region. Democracy is not typically Eastern European but we have it now. There are some weaknesses in it but it exists. This is the best world we've ever got." Tomorrow: Slovakia