‘Attack on civil society’: why Viktor Orbán’s favourite thinktank is in crisis

MCC Brussels received lavish funding from Budapest, but Hungary’s new PM is launching an investigation

Under glittering chandeliers in a neoclassical ballroom, guests took their seats. It was 10am and scores of people had gathered at a private members’ club in Brussels for a conference to mark 250 years of American independence, organised by Viktor Orbán’s favourite thinktank in the EU capital, MCC Brussels.

Opening the one-day event, the MCC director, Frank Furedi, said the 250th anniversary had “really escaped the attention of a European audience” in a speech that lauded the founding fathers before launching a sweeping attack on Europe’s “incompetent political class”.