Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

My guest's formative political experience was the collapse of the Soviet Empire at the end of the 1980s.

Zhujana Selene was a young pro-democracy activist in Hungary, a self-identified liberal who celebrated the collapse of totalitarianism and joined a Hungarian youth movement,

Fides, committed to the building of a free, democratic Hungary. A key ally was Victor Orban,

a charismatic orator and intellectual who advocated a brand of civic liberalism to remove

the last vestiges of the communist system.

He and Jezana Seleni parted company as he took complete control of Fides.

She left politics while he reinvented himself as an advocate of a Christian conservative,

nationalist, populist political movement, which blamed Hungary's problems on meddling from Brussels and an international liberal elite.

He stands accused of violating core European values concerning judicial freedom, clean government and minority rights.

He's at odds with the EU over sanctions on Russia as well, and he remains eager to expand

economic cooperation with his friend Vladimir Putin. Well, Jeanne Seline, who tried and failed

to establish an opposition party, joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you for inviting me.

It's a pleasure to have you on the show. When you look at your

home country, Hungary today, in terms of its politics, its political culture, what do you see?

Well, Hungary is in trouble. This is what I see first. It is a diverting for a track where we

entered 30 years ago, the Western way of life.

The generation of politicians, which are characterized by Fidesz,

Viktor Orban's party, where I started my political career 32 years ago,

we thought we already the Party of the West. Actually, Orban, even 15 years ago, we thought we already the party of the West.

Actually, Orban, even 15 years ago, mentioned in a speech that Fides Party is the new

Western generation.

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