On the shore of Lake Ferto, a tourist complex under construction is denounced by its detractors as the embodiment of the “Orban system”, mixing crony capitalism, violation of European directives, opacity, and pressure on dissenting voices.
In the northwest of Hungary, a few hundred meters from the old leisure base of Fertorakos, a guarded barrier filters the access of trucks to Lake Festo, a place once popular with tourists. A panel displaying Caribbean-colored water boasts of the complex under construction on the Hungarian shore of this lake shared with Austria and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001. On-site, workers dispatched from the other side of the country worked hard to prepare the ground. It is the consortium led by Lorinc Meszaros – the country’s greatest fortune and childhood friend of Viktor Orban, the Hungarian Prime Minister – which is in charge of this first phase of work. What indignant Adrienn Jakal, elected from the opposition of the municipal council of Sopron, a city located about ten kilometers away.“The last twelve years of the Orban government have only served one thing: to enrich the faithful of the Prime Minister and Viktor Orban himself, at the cost of sacrificed natural spaces, such as Lake Festo. »