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BUDAPEST Veronika Mora was getting ready for work when her home phone rang. Im at your office, she recalls a policewoman telling her. Where are you?

Mora, the head of a nonprofit agency that distributed millions of euros in grants to government watchdogs including Transparency International, arrived 30 minutes later to find two dozen officers waiting for her on a crisp Budapest morning last fall. For hours, they combed through file cabinets and downloaded data on organizations that had been deeply critical of the Hungarian government.

The government called it part of an operation seeking to watch the watchdogs, holding them accountable for potential mismanagement and financial irregularities. But to Mora and others, it smacked of harassment. It also signaled a new normal in a country that has emerged as a troubling portent for Europes future.

From France to Finland, right-wing nationalists are gaining at the polls, with a radical new coalition of the far left and far right taking over in Greece last month. Across the continent, it is raising a disquieting question: How might European nations change under this rising club of new nationalists?

For one answer, look no further than Hungary, where from the foothills of the wild Carpathians to the art nouveau quarters of old Budapest Prime Minister Viktor Orban is building what he calls an illiberal democracy that blends both nationalist and populist ideals. Citing Russia and China as models, he is heralding the benefits of the strong state and, critics say, challenging the independence of the courts while reining in the free press.

The crackdown on nonprofits an effort that mirrors a similar move in Russia is the latest example. Authorities have singled out at least seven NGOs for special tax investigations and conducted audits of dozens more including many that had been producing critical reports on everything from corruption to human rights in Orbans Hungary.

What we are seeing is another attempt to dismantle the system of checks and balances in Hungary, Mora said.

As a shaggy-haired dissident, Orban electrified the nation at a historic 1989 protest where he famously took the dais and called for the pullout of Soviet troops. Those events would help precipitate the fall of the Iron Curtain, setting up a new democratic system that was bestowed with Europes highest honor in May 2004: membership in the European Union.

Even during its days as a Soviet satellite, Hungary had practiced goulash communism mixing free market policies with state ownership. But the country was hit hard by the financial crisis that swept the globe in the late 2000s, and the devastated population began to lose faith in the new system of governance. One 2009 poll surprisingly found three in four Hungarians dissatisfied with the way their new democracy was working.

Enter Orban, who was elected to his first term at age 35 in 1998. His move to change Hungary, critics say, began in earnest after his reelection in 2010. It has steadily continued since his Fidesz party won elections in April, propelling the 51-year-old to a third term.

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Hungary taking aim at NGOs and, critics say, democracy