Hungary, a country which started the dismantling of the Iron Curtain in 1989, is now further away from Europe than it was before, German philosopher and sociologist Juergen Habermas said in a lecture at Budapest’s ELTE university on Thursday.

Habermas said that Hungary’s change of government has been “deepened into regime change”, adding that Viktor Orban, a “national populist prime minister” was “stripping the rule of law of all its contents” and seeking to build an “illiberal democracy”.

In his lecture, focusing mostly on issues around the European Union, the philosopher said that European integration was necessary but measures to handle the crisis of recent years may appear to people as terrifying federal paternalism over their countries.

Peoples of Europe have a good reason to build a political union, but they have no intention of building “an additional storey on top of their accustomed building of a nation state only to share it with other states”, Habermas said.

Habermas came to Hungary at the invitation of the Goethe Institute and the Hungarian representation of the European Commission. His spoke before an audience of about a thousand people.