One more headache for the European Union

As if the EU hasn't enough problems on its plate - already in existence and looming - now member Hungary poses another dimension to a raft of issues. Frank Bruni reports in this piece "Round Up the Usual Scapegoats" in The New York Times:

"Pay attention to Hungary. It may not have any great economic heft, and it’s home to only about 10 million people with a tropism toward beer and a talent for brooding. But it could turn out to be a test case of the E.U.’s imperiled sway in these days of debt and austerity. Brussels and Budapest have clashed already over the Hungarian government’s attempts at tighter control of the news media, the judiciary and the central bank.

Hungary could also be a window into just how potently economic anxiety fans the flames of bigotry. E.U. membership hasn’t brought Hungarians the broad prosperity they had hoped for; the country has had severe budgetary woes of late. And the far-right party I mentioned, Jobbik, has converted these disappointments into questions about the country’s orientation to the West and, for good measure, about its supposed coddling of Jews, gays and Roma: Hungary’s trusty trinity of scapegoats.

This month Jobbik introduced a bill that refers to homosexuality as a perversion and bans its promotion in language so vague, opponents say, that two men or two women holding hands in public could theoretically be imprisoned."

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