Professor Christopher Ball teaches at the Business School of Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. In 2013 he was handpicked by then Hungarian Ambassador György Szapáry, an Orbán confidant, to serve as Honorary Consul. Professor Ball, Director of the Central European Institute and István Széchenyi Chair in International Economics, lived in Hungary for a couple of years but does not speak […]
European Union institutions currently based in London, but scheduled to relocate following the United Kingdom’s departure from the EU, are coveted prizes for member states. EU members see these as an important source of new jobs, investment in the local economy and international stature. Hungary, however, is bucking the trend and is uninterested in attracting any EU institution from London […]
Gábor Boczkó, the leader of the Hungarian Fencing Association and also an Olympic silver medalist, recently told viewers on Hungarian TV M1 that the “security situation” was despicable in Leipzig, Germany, where the his team participated in the World Fencing Championship. (Read in Hungarian here.) According to Boczkó, it was hard to focus to the competition because there were disturbances […]
Some of the smaller “new left”-style parties are planning a joint, mass protest for August 20th, Hungary’s national holiday, in support of investigative journalists who will become official targets of the Orbán government’s vitriol in the coming months. The small Együtt party is spearheading the demonstration along Budapest’s Szabad Sajtó (Free Press) boulevard, with support from Zugló Mayor Gergely Karácsony […]
Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s Prime Minister, has told his diplomats to charm influential decision makers everywhere, and use every opportunity to convince the world that his image is distorted in the Western media. At home Mr. Orbán is winning far-right voters with revved up racist, anti-Muslin and anti-Semitic rhetoric. Overseas he is advertising a moderate image, as a politician who has […]
According to the results of the latest Republikon poll, this time exploring party preferences among Budapest residents, if it were just up to the Hungarian capital’s voters, Hungary would have a left-centre or liberal government following the spring 2018 elections. Fully 35% of all Budapest residents indicated that they prefer a new left-centre government, while 27% would rather see Prime […]
Zsolt Bayer, the prominent publicist, the co-founder of the ruling Fidesz party and close confidant of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, announced that Hungary must exit the European Union. He went further, calling the EU “a scalding pigsty.” Mr. Bayer was speaking to the local television station of the northeastern town of Miskolc, where he said: “If the EU continues along […]
This past weekend marked the opening of Budapest’s annual Pride celebrations. Kriszta Székely, the 34 year old director of the Katona József Theatre, opened this year’s Pride with an impassioned and at times angry speech, in which she took to task not only the Orbán government, but the opposition too. Both the Népszava daily and the Magyar Narancs magazine published […]
My flight had just landed at Budapest’s Liszt Ferenc International Airport on Saturday morning. I was arriving back in Budapest from the coastal town of Burgas (Bulgaria), after spending five insightful days exploring both the Romanian and Bulgarian Black Sea Coast, and beyond. After my Wizz Air flight landed, I made my way over to passport control at Terminal 2B. […]
Gergely Gulyás, vice president of the ruling Fidesz party, expressed concern that the party which once limited its membership to people under the age of 35 has now lost Hungary’s youth vote. “Success is most certainly rather attractive to young people, but let me exercise self-criticism: even if Fidesz is successful, today it is not appealing enough to young people,” […]
