How neighbouring populists fall out

VIKTOR ORBAN and Robert Fico usually get along well. The prime ministers, respectively, of Hungary and Slovakia are both Eurosceptic populist nationalists. But in December Mr Fico did something that threatened their relationship. He made it illegal to criticise the Benes decrees, laws passed after the second world war by the government of what was then Czechoslovakia. Under the decrees, the property of ethnic Germans and Hungarians was confiscated—and nearly all ethnic Germans and many Hungarians were expelled—in retaliation for Germany’s invasion and for fascist Hungary’s alliance with the Nazis.

Today Slovakia’s ethnic Hungarians number around 420,000, almost 8% of the population. They were outraged by the ban, and protests erupted. It seemed like a political opportunity for Mr Orban, who faces an election in April: he usually casts himself as the defender of ethnic Hungarians in neighbouring countries. Instead he merely sought “clarifying discussions”.

The Benes decrees have been a sore point for decades. In 2002 Mr Orban, then in his first term as prime minister, said Slovakia and the Czech Republic should repeal them before becoming members of the European Union. Two years later they both joined with the statutes still in place. Recently Slovak officials have refused to pay ethnic Hungarians for land expropriated for infrastructure projects: the property, they argue, should have been confiscated from the current owners’ ancestors.

That led Progressive Slovakia, a liberal opposition party, to call for a ban on confiscating property based on the decrees. Mr Fico, hoping to impugn their patriotism, quickly pushed through the anti-criticism law. Questioning the decrees is now, in theory, punishable by six months in prison. But there is no sign that the measure is being enforced, and it may have backfired. The main consequence, reckons Zoltan Szalay, editor of Napunk, a Hungarian-language news site, is that ethnic Hungarians will probably not vote for Mr Fico.

The incident is awkward for Mr Orban. Mr Fico is an ally in Brussels, where both men oppose the EU’s support for Ukraine and its energy sanctions on Russia. Hungary and Slovakia each get about 90% of their oil from Russia and buy lots of Russian natural gas. Messrs Orban and Fico are rare among EU leaders for having paid visits to Vladimir Putin since the invasion.

Mr Orban’s reticence has let Hungary’s opposition take the lead. Peter Magyar, whose anti-corruption Tisza party is ahead in the polls, called the Slovak government “anti-Hungarian” and said Mr Orban would be a “traitor” if he did not denounce Mr Fico. Unlike Hungary’s socialist and liberal opposition, Mr Magyar, a defector from Mr Orban’s Fidesz party, is comfortable with a bit of jingoism. Mr Orban’s government has promised legal help for ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia, and seems to hope the storm will blow over. But the spat shows how hard it can be for Europe’s nationalists, even friendly ones, to avoid stepping on each other’s toes. ■