IT IS a miserable day for a political stunt. Rain drips ceaselessly from the stands of the cathedral-like stadium in Felcsut, the home village of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s football-mad prime minister. Bescarved fans huddle for warmth as they queue to watch their team, Puskas Academy, take on a local rival. Across the street Laszlo Szilagyi, an election candidate for Dialogue, an opposition party, and a few colleagues have gathered outside Mr Orban’s modest cottage. Sausages bearing the names of national oligarchs are draped over the garden fence, in an apparent nod to an old Hungarian aphorism that mocks the wealthy.

For the likes of Mr Szilagyi, Felcsut is emblematic of everything that has gone wrong under Mr Orban. The stadium, completed in 2014, cost a fortune; a nearby tourist train, reopened in 2016 with European Union funding, runs half-empty most of the time. Kleptocratic elites bleed public services while Fidesz, the ruling party, chips away at Hungary’s democracy.

In some respects Hungary’s descent into semi-authoritarianism follows a familiar storyline: the constitutional jiggery-pokery; the use of legal tools to neuter courts, intimidate media and tilt the electoral playing-field; the avoidance of outright oppression or violence. What makes the Hungarian case different, says Michael Ignatieff, rector of the Budapest-based Central European University (which has been threatened with closure by Mr Orban), is the “collusion and compliance” of the EU.

Brussels has worried about Hungary for years, but its officials are no match for Fidesz’s clever lawyers. Other governments have not found the will to take on Mr Orban. An extra layer of protection is afforded by the European People’s Party, the centre-right pan-EU political group of which Fidesz remains a member in good standing. Shamefully, the EPP’s leaders have been garlanding Mr Orban with praise as Hungary’s election approaches.

A more tangible form of help comes in the form of the subsidies Hungary receives from the EU, which in good years can run to the equivalent of 6% of GDP. Europe’s taxpayers are propping up a government that undermines the rule of law, and their transfers feed the systems of patronage that have come to define Mr Orban’s rule. Much of this money finds its way to cronies of the prime minister, often via overpriced procurement contracts. Jozsef Martin at Transparency International, an anti-graft watchdog, says that corruption in Hungary is centralised and semi-legal, making it difficult to challenge.

That has certainly been the EU’s experience. The European Commission is, in effect, powerless to combat systemic corruption in a member state. OLAF, the EU’s anti-fraud agency, has raised concerns about specific European-funded projects in Hungary, but it relies on national prosecutors to investigate. That is a problem in a country that has blurred the boundaries between party and state. Brussels insiders admit they are at a loss.

In the run-up to the election on April 8th, Mr Orban has drowned out allegations of government corruption with polemics against immigration. But the prime minister’s earthy tactics should not be confused with anything resembling an ideology. Mr Orban’s depiction of himself as the defender of Christian Europe against enemies from without (hordes of criminal migrants) and within (NGOs, effete EU bureaucrats and George Soros), wrapped up in his “illiberal democracy”, may look like a challenge to European values, but it is largely window-dressing.

When Fidesz took office in 2010 it was driven by a roughly equal blend of ideology and thirst for power, says Mr Martin. The first element has now been largely excised. Over the decades Mr Orban has shed beliefs as chameleons shed skins. Compare Poland, where Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the de facto leader, still nurtures a long-held conviction (once shared by Mr Orban) that the state must be remade to undo the betrayal of post-communist elites.

Were Fidesz-friendly pollsters to discover that voters were no longer animated by migration, says Andras Kosa, author of a biography of Mr Orban, the party would simply manufacture a different foe. These days Fidesz’s ideologues, such as they are, assemble theoretical scaffolding to justify the channelling of state resources to favoured businessmen under the rubric of “economic patriotism”. The EU is harbouring not an illiberal democracy, but a semi-autocratic kleptocracy in which loyalty offers the quickest route to riches.

Eternal Viktory

There is a small chance that Fidesz will not win a majority on April 8th. If it does, it is unlikely to remain idle. NGOs, especially those funded from abroad, will be first in the cross-hairs. What remains of the independent media may also find itself targeted, warns Peter Kreko of Political Capital, a liberal think-tank. And the stakes extend beyond this country of 9.7m souls, for the Hungarian example inspires others. Foreign investors complain that the government’s habit of hitting multinationals with arbitrary rules and taxes has spread to other central European countries. Mr Kaczynski may not be building a Hungarian-style crony state, but his tactics increasingly bear the Fidesz imprint (and Poland and Hungary have each other’s backs in battles with Brussels). Mr Orban has shown that the international cost of trampling democratic norms and the rule of law appears to be close to zero. That lesson has not gone unheeded elsewhere.

That is why some EU governments want to use an imminent debate over the club’s multi-year budget to threaten their miscreant peers with the loss of funds. Some fear this would merely feed Mr Orban’s need to rally support against an external foe. But the alternative is that he continues to milk a system which, notes Mr Ignatieff, suits him very nicely: “Run against the EU from Monday to Friday; cash its cheques on Saturday and Sunday.” This is the arrangement that Europe’s politicians are tolerating, its institutions are enabling and its taxpayers are supporting.