In 2012, the European Commission threatened Hungary with legal action over its authoritarian measures. The Fidesz government responded with minor alterations, and the secretary general of the Council of Europe, Thorbjorn Jagland, blessed the adjustments as “significant” and left it at that. Mr. Orban insists that he is in compliance with European Union standards, but legal scholars at the Center for Media and Communication Studies, where I am the director, have demonstrated how far Hungary really is from European norms. The Hungarian human rights advocate and former O.S.C.E. press freedom expert Miklos Haraszti estimates that the government has practically 100 percent control of the media outside urban areas.

With diversity of ownership and affiliation gone from radio, television and print media, the climate of control has not only introduced a significant trend of self-censorship in Hungarian journalism, but is also having a chilling effect on foreign-owned media interests. An online editor working for a media subsidiary of the German giant Deutsche Telekom was recently ousted after publishing a report about the expenses of one of Mr. Orban’s ministers. Responding to the ad tax, the Bertelsmann-owned RTL media group scolded Mr. Orban’s government for its “aggressive attempt” to undermine its political independence.

How is this all possible in the European Union? The commission’s reticence about measures like the new ad tax law means that Mr. Orban has received few signals of disapproval for what a veteran American journalist in Budapest, Erik D’Amato, in a recent interview with HVG called the “Putinizing” of Hungary. Indeed, the European funding will flow directly through the prime minister’s office, reinforcing and rewarding Mr. Orban’s autocratic tendencies — even as government-friendly media outlets paint the European Union as a meddling foreign power.

If the money is withheld, Mr. Orban might portray the European Union as a bully. But dispensing the funds will definitely make Mr. Orban a worse bully than he already is. Delivery of the structural aid package must be pegged to restoring the policies that created the healthy media pluralism that existed in Hungary before the Fidesz party and Mr. Orban came to power.

Media, information and telecommunications policies have an impact on all other policies. Media pluralism keeps democracies working. That’s something any European policy maker will say and every journalist will print. But a regime as tough on the media as this one should not receive such generous and unconditional support. Europe should not be financing a government that is undermining one of the cornerstones of democracy.

Philip N. Howard, a professor at the Central European University and at the University of Washington, is the author of the forthcoming book “Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up.”