KESMA (Közép-Európai Sajtó és Média Alapítvány)

In a single day in November 2018, eight separate sets of documents were filed at Hungarian company courts through which government-aligned media owners donated roughly 500 media outlets - including county dailies, Origo and HírTV - free of charge to the newly created Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA). Weeks later the government issued a decree declaring the transaction of "strategic national importance," exempting it from substantive review by the Competition Authority (GVH). In January 2020 the Budapest-Capital Regional Court found that the GVH had issued its clearance certificate in an unlawful procedural form, without any substantive investigation; the GVH formally corrected the defect, then - since the government decree placed the merger outside the scope of competition law - rejected any renewed substantive review for lack of jurisdiction, meaning the media conglomerate never underwent real antitrust scrutiny. KESMA-affiliated outlets received 37 percent of the government's advertising budget in 2020, creating what has been described as an "enormous economic barrier" for independent competitors.