Hungarian government vows to 'sweep away' NGOs funded by George Soros

The Hungarian government is targeting George Soros after it said it would get rid of non-governmental organisations in the country linked to the billionaire financier.

Szilard Nemeth, vice-president of the ruling Fidesz party, told reporters that the election of Donald Trump as US president gave Budapest the opportunity to "sweep out" NGOs funded by Soros, which "serve global capitalists and back political correctness over national governments", Bloomberg reported.

Trump is a vehement critic of Soros, whom he once described as being part of a powerful elite whose decisions have helped large corporations and "stripped our country of its wealth".

In April 2017, MPs in Hungary will debate a bill which could lead to NGOs being audited.

The country's prime minister, Viktor Orban, has been criticised for his lurch to the right and a crackdown on press freedom, as well as NGOs, which he claimed are funded to "organise refugee streams and boost migration".

There are about 60 groups in the country that get funding from Soros's Open Society Foundations. Orban told the 888.hu website: "In every country they will want to displace Soros. This can already be seen in Europe. They investigate where the money comes from, what kind of intelligence connections there are, which NGOs represent what interests."

Chris Stone, president of the Open Society Foundations, told the Guardian that the group would continue to work in Hungary.

"It's not yet but let's see what Europe does if the situation in Hungary deteriorates," he said. "That's a question for the whole of Europe," he said.

In 2014, Barack Obama criticised Hungary as being a country that tried to regulate and intimidate civil society as part of "a campaign to undermine the very idea of democracy".