<\/p>\n
Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar holds an extraordinary press briefing following a voting on the 17th amendment to the Fundamental Law in the parliament building in Budapest, Hungary, Monday, July 13, 2026. (Tamas Purger\/MTI via AP)<\/p>\n
Tamas Purger\/Tamas Purger\/MTI via AP<\/p>\n
FILE – The then-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto holds a press conference following a cabinet meeting in Budapest, Hungary, Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026. (Boglarka Bodnar\/MTI via AP, File)<\/p>\n
Boglarka Bodnar\/Boglarka Bodnar\/MTI via AP<\/p>\n
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) \u2014 Hungary\u2019s government announced an investigation Monday into a large foreign investment by Chinese automaker BYD negotiated by a former foreign minister who last week resigned from Parliament to take an executive position at the company.<\/p>\n
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P\u00e9ter Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3’s announcement last Wednesday that he would take the job at the world\u2019s top electric carmaker prompted accusations of a conflict of interest and criticism over his role in facilitating substantial government subsidies to the company while in office.<\/p>\n
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Prime Minister P\u00e9ter Magyar told lawmakers on Monday that Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3, a close ally of former Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n, had helped BYD while he was in office \u201cwith hundreds of billions (of forints) in public money, diplomatic support and state infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will examine all the decisions, negotiations and state commitments made by P\u00e9ter Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 that were related to the BYD Hungary investment,\u201d Magyar said Monday.<\/p>\n
He added the investigation would look into all subsidies, tax breaks, permits, environmental exemptions and publicly-funded investments given to large multinational firms during Orb\u00e1n’s tenure.<\/p>\n
“We will investigate who made these decisions, who prepared them, what professional warnings were ignored, and how much burden they left on Hungarian taxpayers, workers, local communities and the environment,\u201d Magyar said.<\/p>\n
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Neither Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 nor BYD have responded to Magyar’s allegations of conflict of interest while Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 was in office. The former foreign minister has posed his new job as a \u201cprestigious\u201d opportunity to work for one the “greatest success stories\u201d in the automotive industry.<\/p>\n
While serving in government, Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 was instrumental in securing foreign investments in Hungary from Chinese companies, including his now-employer BYD, which received considerable state subsidies during his tenure.<\/p>\n
In 2023, Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 announced that BYD would open its first European factory in Hungary \u2014 allowing the conglomerate to skirt European Union import tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles imposed to protect the continent\u2019s domestic auto manufacturing sector.<\/p>\n
In 2025, Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 also announced BYD would locate its European headquarters and a research and development center in Budapest and receive 20 billion forints ($63.7 million) in government assistance.<\/p>\n
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The investments were part of the Orb\u00e1n government’s push to make Hungary a global hub of lithium-ion battery manufacturing, largely through attracting Chinese battery manufacturers who opened a series of plants across the country.<\/p>\n
The moves led local residents, environmentalists and opposition politicians to protest over fears the new industry would exacerbate existing environmental problems, hit the country\u2019s precious water supplies and further undermine its economy to China.<\/p>\n
While foreign minister, Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 also maintained close relations with Russia despite its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Breaking with nearly all of his EU counterparts, he frequently traveled to Moscow to negotiate agreements on purchasing Russian oil and gas and to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, whom he referred to as his \u201cfriend.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was embroiled in controversy during Hungary\u2019s 2026 election campaign when the Washington Post reported that he made regular phone calls to Lavrov during high-level EU meetings with \u201clive reports on what\u2019s been discussed.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 has dismissed the report while acknowledging that he conferred with Lavrov before and after EU foreign minister meetings about their agenda and decisions.<\/p>\n
During a government news conference last week, Magyar said that \u201cas far as I know,\u201d an investigation had been launched concerning Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3\u2019s connections to the Russian government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar holds an extraordinary press briefing following a voting on the 17th amendment to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[16416],"tags":[250,307,422,73750,572,573,934,447,569,3215,9770,350],"class_list":["post-159017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-peter-magyar","tag-china","tag-europe","tag-hungary","tag-hungary-probe-byd-deal-szijjarto","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-peter-magyar","tag-peter-szijjarto","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-product-32502-ap-online-europe-news","tag-sergey-lavrov","tag-viktor-orban"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116952800037476600","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}