Twitter suspends government-run account for the first time

The account, @AboutHungary, was temporarily removed and then reinstated

(Getty Images)

Social networking website Twitter suspended a government-run account for the first time “without any warning or explanation”, secretary of state for Hungary Zoltan Kovacs said.

The account, @AboutHungary, tweets largely news and responses from the office of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, including statistics on the coronavirus outbreak in the country.

But on Wednesday morning, Mr Kovacs said the account had been mysteriously placed in lockdown, with no apparent reasoning as to why.

Tweeting from his own account, Mr Kovacs said: "The official account of the Hungarian Government, @AboutHungary, has been suspended by @Twitter without any warning or explanation. This is extremely interesting in view of the fact that the @EU_Commission will publish its first rule of law report today. It seems that the beautiful new world has finally arrived, in which tech giants are silencing those who hold different opinions. We have taken the necessary steps and are awaiting an official explanation from Twitter."

An hour later, after it was reinstated, @AboutHungary tweeted: "This account was indeed suspended without warning or explanation. It has apparently now been restored -- also without explanation."

It came after the European Union's executive commission published a report which stated that standards are facing "important challenges" in some EU countries, particularly in  Hungary and Poland.

The report was published as part of the "rule of law review cycle," that vets the state of democracy and the rule of law in all its member states.

In the report, published on Wednesday, it said  prosecution of high-level corruption in Hungary "remains very limited," while Poland’s national justice systems, anti-corruption frameworks, media freedom and checks and balances were inadequate.

EU values commissioner Vera Jourova said: “It is relevant to have an overview of these issues, and see the links between them. Not least because deficiencies often merge into an undrinkable cocktail.”

The Hungarian government has criticised the report, and said in a statement: "The Commission's Rule of Law Report is not only fallacious, but absurd. 

"The concept and methodology of the Commission's Rule of Law Report are unfit for purpose, its sources are unbalanced and its content is unfounded."

The Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki did not comment on the report itself, while its opposition, the Civic Coalition, said it was a criticism of the government rather than of Poland.

Recently, Facebook and Twitter took down network of Russia-linked accounts accused of spreading conspiracy theories and undermining democracy ahead of the US presidential elections.

At the time, Twitter said it had suspended five accounts for "platform manipulation", which it said it could "reliably attribute to Russian state actors".

The Independent understands the deletion of the Hungarian account was made in error. Twitter declined to comment.

With reporting from Associated Press