EditOrbán’s media playbook in the Balkans: A critical test for EU Media Freedom Act
Hungarian-linked networks are reshaping the Balkan media landscape and exposing the EU’s weakest points in defending press freedom, a reports reveals
A roundtable organised by the Balkan Free Media Initiative (BFMI), a Brussels-based organisation addressing media freedom issues in Southeastern Europe, focused on Thursday (16 October) on Viktor Orbán “media investment” in the Balkans.
For several years, individuals closely linked to the Hungarian ruling party Fidesz and autocratic PM Viktor Orbán have been quietly acquiring media outlets across the Balkans. This strategic push is viewed as a deliberate effort to consolidate an alliance with regimes friendly to Budapest, notably in Serbia and North Macedonia—an alliance considered “at odds with the EU.” The latest findings, presented in a key report by BFMI, lay bare the tactics behind Orbán’s strategy.
BFMI Co-Founder and Director Antoinette Nikolova stated that the research highlights “Hungary expanding influence in the Balkans and the way Viktor Orbán’s nationalistic ideology is spreading through the region.”
Highlighting the systemic nature of the problem, Robert Nemeth, a consultant at the Media and Journalism Research Center, called Hungary a “textbook case of media capture,” where “one of the first laws after 2010 was a media law creating a regulatory body filled only with loyalists.”
The resulting convergence of concentrated media ownership, nationalist politics, and foreign influence creates a combustible mix in the region, threatening to destabilise Europe’s wider information space, with the Balkans serving as a “testing ground” for these vulnerabilities.
Speaking at the conference, moderator Georgi Gotev, who is co-founder of BMFI, warned that Orbán is building “a space of authoritarianism and corruption in the Western Balkans for his own profit, a space he hopes to subcontract for profit to superpowers such as China and Russia”.
Dimitar Ruskov, journalist with BGNES, a news agency in Bulgaria that is a partner to EUalive, highlighted similarities between the BFMI report and his recent documentary titled “China’s Balkan Train – The gateway to a divided Europe”. He said the documentary was already viewed more than 2 million times.
The opaque network of Orbán-linked investors
Hungarian-backed media takeovers in the Balkans have exposed a critical gap in Europe’s defences against media capture. Between 2017 and 2022, investors leveraged opaque ownership structures and networks of shell companies across Hungary, Slovenia, and North Macedonia to conceal beneficial ownership.
Alexandra Karppi, Research & Communications Manager at BFMI, noted that “Hungarian oligarchs use complex, opaque ownership structures to secure control of media outlets without transparency.” This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the “Hungarian government media consolidation serves the Orbán regime’s interests and the majority of government-controlled media outlets are owned by one single foundation in Hungary, according to Nemeth.
Nemeth further highlighted that the government’s control has even “extended to social media through tools like Megafon with pro-government influencers.”
The most prominent example of this tactic is the investor Péter Schatz, formerly the head of business development at the Hungarian public broadcaster and founder of the pro-government tabloid Ripost.
In Slovenia, Schatz’s network acquired a 45% stake in the media company Nova24TV in 2017. To evade Slovenia’s Mass Media Act, which requires state review for any share purchase of 20% or higher, Schatz split the acquisition into three 15% stakes held by three nominally independent Hungarian companies: Ripost Média Kft., R-Post Kft., and Ridikül Magazin Kft. This deliberate fragmentation allowed the purchase to go undetected by regulatory bodies.
Anuška Delić, Founder & Editor-in-Chief of Oštro and Regional Editor at OCCRP, confirmed that “Hungarian money is still very much fuelling media in Slovenia,” adding a chilling observation: “These media are the main disinformation portals in Slovenia now; they skew the public debate greatly.”
Schatz pursued a similarly non-transparent approach in North Macedonia, becoming the dominant owner of the major pro-VMRO-DPMNE TV station Alfa TV in 2017. The ultimate ownership of Nova24TV and Alfa TV was not publicly disclosed and was only exposed later by investigative journalists.
This political dimension was underscored by Gotev, who recalled how Orbán exfiltrated former North Macedonian PM Nikola Gruevski who faced prison for corruption in his country in 2018, in an operation “looking like a spy story from the Cold War era.”
Money laundering and advertising schemes
Beyond opaque acquisitions, national authorities in Slovenia and North Macedonia uncovered schemes involving non-transparent advertising contracts used by Hungarian investors to finance their media holdings abroad.
Investigators found that these arrangements, allegedly bypassing regulatory oversight, involved advertising contracts signed by the same investor as both the buyer and the seller.
These agreements often included inflated prices and “phantom” businesses, with financial police in North Macedonia concluding that such transactions “lead to the existence of elements of the criminal act of money laundering.”
The non-transparent financing, which channels funds from a state-aligned ecosystem through Hungarian media actors and financial intermediaries, ultimately distorts media markets and puts independent outlets at a significant disadvantage.
The network of implicated investors extends further. Similar advertisements were placed in outlets owned by Ágnes Adamik, another former executive at the Hungarian public broadcaster.
Furthermore, Péter Schatz was claimed to have exchanged funds with V4NA, a London-registered international news agency co-founded by Árpád Habony, a Hungarian media mogul and long-time advisor to Viktor Orbán.
The European dimension and EMFA shortcomings
The Hungarian influence has also reached pan-European institutions. Euronews, traditionally a pan-European broadcaster, is now 98% owned by ALPAC Capital, an investment fund with significant financing links to Viktor Orbán’s ecosystem.
According to Nikolova, the threat is now broader: “We are not just talking about Budapest using spyware on journalists anymore. They’re actually spying on the European institutions too, their own partners.”
The findings highlight that even with the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) now in force, its current safeguards are insufficient to detect these schemes. The most crucial shortcoming is that the EMFA does not mandate the disclosure of the final beneficial owners of companies.
Nemeth explained the Hungarian government’s clear motivation: “Orbán’s government opposes the European Media Freedom Act because it would dismantle their media empire.”
Where is this money coming from?
Delić lamented that “where this money is coming from is extremely important, and no one in the region is addressing this as they should,” concluding that “the intertwining of political and business interests through media ownership fuels distrust in journalism.”
Karppi stressed that this “non-transparent cross-border media financing disrupts genuine media market competition.”
Delić observed sardonically that “Russians don’t need to interfere because they have Hungarians to do it for them.”
To address these vulnerabilities, Karppi outlined a clear set of recommendations: “There is a need for full ownership transparency, mandating beneficial owner disclosure,” adding, “We recommend an EU-wide publicly available ownership database, including candidate countries.”
She also called for “expanding regulatory oversight over cross-border media investments” and noted that “harmonising regulatory standards between EU member states and candidate countries is essential,” while concluding that “ethical alternatives should be encouraged in media financing to disrupt corrupt networks.”
Ultimately, as BFMI’s Antoinette Nikolova insisted, “Defending democracy in Europe has to be a top priority, and we need to treat media freedom as a security issue because that’s what it is.”
Caption: A handout photo made available by the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Press Office shows Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (R) welcoming the Prime Minister of North Macedonia, Hristijan Mickoski (L), in his office, the former Carmelite Monastery, in Budapest, Hungary, 04 March 2025. EPA/VIVIEN CHER BENKO HANDOUT
Updated: October 18, 2025 - 06:29
