Fugitive Polish officials accused of corruption find asylum in Hungary, raising concerns about EU rule of law.
Marcin Romanowski, a former deputy justice minister under Poland’s ousted Law and Justice (PiS) government, allegedly embezzled more than zł100 million ($24.5 million) while in office. The evidence for the crime is incontrovertible: His closest associate, Tomasz Mraz, has been cooperating with prosecutors, turning over recorded phone calls in which Romanowski and he discussed siphoning money from a public fund intended for crime victims.
When a parliamentary committee and the prosecutor’s office summoned Romanowski for questioning, he pretended that he was hospitalized, before disappearing without a trace. It soon became clear where he had gone. After the Polish prosecutor’s office issued a Europe-wide arrest warrant and an Interpol Red Notice for him, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced that his government would offer asylum to any politicians suffering persecution in Poland. By then, Romanowski apparently had already been in Hungary for a few days.
Romanowski is not the first PiS official to flee to Hungary. After being summoned by another parliamentary committee, Daniel Obajtek, the former head of Orlen, Poland’s largest state-owned company, also sought Orbán’s protection. He cynically “ran” for a seat in the European Parliament from Hungarian territory, and only set foot in Poland again after he had won and received parliamentary immunity (the Polish prosecutor has since applied to have this status revoked).
Protecting corrupt politicians is nothing new for Orbán. He has already granted asylum to former North Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, who fled to Hungary to escape a prison sentence on corruption charges. And he allowed former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to hide in the Hungarian embassy during the investigation into his failed coup attempt following his 2022 electoral defeat.
With cynical PiS deputies and ministers avoiding accountability by fleeing to Hungary, I can imagine that the party may even form a “government in exile” for the duration of Donald Tusk’s premiership. In any case, Orbán’s asylum for the corrupt has placed the Tusk government in a difficult position. The public expects accountability for the thieves, crooks, and cronies who mismanaged the country’s affairs under the previous government. But with prosecutions moving too slowly, widespread disappointment has sunk in.
Many fear a repeat of what happened in the United States, when the wheels of justice moved too slowly to hold Donald Trump accountable for the attempted coup following the 2020 election. No democracy is safe if politicians can attempt to overthrow it, or skim hundreds of millions of dollars from public coffers, only to slip away to a nearby mafia state to lead quiet, cushy lives.
Without the rule of law and political accountability, democratic systems will no longer command the public’s respect or hold any legitimacy. Cynicism will spread, citizens will withdraw from civic engagement, and the very people who fled will have an opportunity to seize the levers of power once again.
PiS and Orbán may have won a small, temporary victory over Tusk, but in the long run, Orbán could be the biggest loser. Although he is currently euphoric following Trump’s victory, his country will soon pay the price for his coziness with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A deal that allowed Russian natural gas to transit through Ukraine to Hungary and Slovakia (which is ruled by another pro-Russian populist), among other countries, expired at the end of 2024, and Ukraine refuses to renew it.
With Poland planning to appeal to the European Commission to initiate proceedings against Hungary under Article 259 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, every law-abiding EU member state should pay close attention to what happens next. If Hungary is allowed to become a haven for corrupt politicians across Europe, the rule of law will suffer everywhere. With the stakes so high, the EU cannot afford to turn a blind eye.
Orbán has been waging a political war on the liberal democratic West for the past decade, becoming a creature of Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. As his dependence on them grows, his efforts to subvert European democracy will only intensify. And the more isolated he becomes within Europe, the easier it will be for Russia and China to exploit his weakness. Hungary will become another Belarus, so dependent on foreign dictators that its sovereignty is meaningless.
Orbán’s efforts to undercut the rule of law in European countries may play well among right-wing nativists, but it is not a winning long-term strategy. If your only friends are Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin, you have no friends at all.
Sławomir Sierakowski, Founder of the Krytyka Polityczna movement, is a Mercator senior fellow.