A few days after the campaign period for the general elections in April officially began, Viktor Orban's Fidesz party kicked down the doors of public schools and started handing out laptops to be funded by the EU.

Despite the fact that it has been known since the outbreak of the pandemic that the Hungarian public education system could not be completely switched to online teaching due to a lack of tech resources, the government has only now started to invest massively into providing schools with laptops. The timing is no coincidence as the election campaign officially started on 12 February 2022 and the government is in a legal battle with teachers, who have been fighting for months to go on a strike lawfully for a rise in salaries. The RRF funds dedicated to compensate for the damage caused by the epidemic may come in handy to the government in this situation.

Zoltán Maruzsa, State Secretary for Public Education. Source: Komka Péter / MTI/MTVA

The laptops were handed out within the project ‘RRF-1.2.1-2021 Ensuring equal access to digital education for pupils and teachers’. The project is forseen to be funded by the RRF, althouth Hungary's receovery plan has still not been approved by the EU. The government aims purchase altogether 560.000 laptops for students and 55.000 laptops for teachers in the next four years for HUF 200 bn (EUR 550m). In the first phase of the project around 120.000 laptops will be distributed among students, teachers and institutions by the end of March 2022. One of the suppliers of Laptops is Delta Systems Ltd, that provides 30.000 laptops to schools in eight counties for HUF 6bn (EUR 18m). Applications for digital equipment could be submitted for three weeks through a consortium assigned by the government. The consortium is led by the Klebelsberg Center, a body subordinated to the Ministry of Human Resources. Initially, Klebelsberg Center was set up to centralize public education, now, it is responsible for running public schools. 

The opposition media were not allowed to report on ceremonies where the laptops were handed over, opposition newspaper Népszava's application for press registration was rejected by the Klebelsberg Center. However, the government took care of the documentation of the ceremonies. In Miskolc, Fidesz candidate, Katalin Csöbör, in Szentendre, state secretary and Fidesz candidate Eszter Vitályos, and in Salgótarján, MP Zsolt Becsó took part in the ceremony. A duty that the politicians were proud to undertake. Népszava reports that 3,570 schools may be beneficiaries of the fund.

State Secretary and Fidesz candidate Eszter Vitályos gives laptops to high school students Source: Eszter Vitályos official site on Facebook

According to the website of the electoral commission, there were complaints in at least nine cases where laptops where handed over by government politicians during the campaing period, most of those were turned down. In some of the cases the commission found that Hungarian electoral rules had been violated as the MPs are not supposed to show up on these government programs. However, the commission did not impose any sanctions. Even these decisions were later overturned by the Kúria. The highest court of Hungary found no violation of campaign law: state secretaries running for a seat in the Parliament can hand over laptops to school children in case they do not use direct campaign elements such as a party logo during the ceremony. Apart from weak rules applying to the campaign period that, there is no legislation in Hungary under which, and no institution to which, a complaint can be made if public officials use their office for political advertising.

The case well illustrates the state of rule of law in Hungary and government's attitude towards the use of EU funds.