Hungary’s opposition has achieved a symbolic victory over the issue of a Chinese university campus – but it is unlikely that a referendum about the Budapest campus of the controversial Chinese Fudan university can be staged at the same time as parliamentary elections due on April 3.

Opposition parties have gathered 470,000 signatures in favour of a vote on the proposed Budapest campus of the Shanghai-based Fudan University, financed by a 1.3-billion-euro loan from China Development Bank.

Critics say the cost of the campus would be higher than what the government spends each year on running all of the country’s state-run universities. The contract is also classified, just like the other big Chinese project in Hungary, the construction of a new Belgrade-Budapest railway.

Budapest mayor Gergely Karacsony, who has been critical about the project from the beginning, initiated the referendum, but was backed by the broad alliance of opposition parties, including leftists, liberals, centrists and the former extreme-right.

The referendum would include two questions: the first would repeal the law on the transfer of assets to the Fudan Hungary University Foundation; the second would extend the maximum duration of unemployment benefit from 90 to 270 days.

According to the constitution, 200,000 signatures are needed for a question to initiate a referendum.

Many observers had doubted that the opposition, which only started its campaign before Christmas, would be able to reach the threshold.

“This is an important symbolic victory for the opposition, a positive message that they have achieved something together, regardless of the timing or the outcome of the referendum,” Andrea Szabo, senior research fellow of the Centre for Social Sciences at the Institute for Political Science told BIRN.

The opposition visibly lost momentum after its successful primaries in October 2021, which ended with the surprise victory of conservative mayor Peter Marki-Zay, so this could be the start of a new beginning, she added.

Human chain delivering signatures to the National Election Office in Budapest, January 21

Elections are seen as real referendum

The National Election Office has now 60 days to prove the signatures and decide on the date of the referendum, which the opposition wants to stage together with the parliamentary elections on April 3.

But most experts think this deadline is unrealistic and the authorities will be in no rush to comply. “There is zero chance to stage the referendum on the same day as the parliamentary elections and the opposition is also aware of this,” Szabo said.

The real referendum will be the parliamentary elections with one single question: Fidesz or not Fidesz, and this will also determine the fate of the Fudan investment, she added.

Budapest mayor Gergely Karacsony is also aware of the symbolism of the referendum. “These signatures were not collected just for the sake of a referendum,” he said on Friday. “These signatures have been collected to restore faith in politics which would serve public interest.”

Opposition politicians, who showed unprecedented unity after weeks of internal feuds and open debates, are optimistic and interpret their success in gathering the necessary number of signatures, despite the Christmas break and chilly winter conditions, as proof that defeat of the Orban-led government is possible.

The Fudan question itself may not mobilize many people outside of Budapest, but the opposition unity behind it and the human chain delivering the signatures to the National Election Office on Friday are seen as symbols that the opposition is on track again.

Orban’s government has meanwhile faced no obstacles to holding its own referendum on the same day as parliamentary elections.

The referendum on what it calls a child-protection law will ask people whether they support sexual orientation courses for minors without parental consent, promotion of gender reassignment treatments for minors, unrestricted sexual content in media and media content about gender reassignment for minors.

NGOs have called the referendum questions deliberately manipulative, using legitimate concerns of parents to incite hatred against the LGBT+ community and vulnerable social groups.

David Vigh from Amnesty International is urging Hungarians “to cast invalid votes to those invalid questions, [so that the referendum] remains under the validity threshold.”

The timing of the Fudan referendum will most likely be sometime after the elections, but few will be really interested in its outcome by then. If Orban has by then won a fourth time, he will probably feel strong enough to push the Fudan project through, although in 2017 he backed off hosting the 2024 Olympics in Budapest when Momentum, a new party, launched a campaign against it. By contrast, if the opposition wins in April, the Fudan project will be off the table, regardless of a referendum.