Balázs Hankó spearheaded Hungarian cultural policy from 2024 to 2026, focusing on upholding the Western cultural canon and traditional Hungarian values. Affiliated with Fidesz — the party of former leader Viktor Orbán — he served as minister of Culture and Innovation and is currently a member of Parliament.

Before joining Fidesz, his career unfolded primarily in academia and the scientific community. A pharmacist by training, he holds a doctorate in pharmaceutical sciences; he worked at Semmelweis University, holding teaching and administrative roles related to higher education and vocational training. His career progressed toward the management of university and innovation policies, culminating in his formal entry into the Orbán government as a State secretary from 2022 to 2024.

In recent months, the mainstream media has highlighted a controversy surrounding the distribution of 17 billion forints (over 40 million euros) from the National Cultural Fund. The matter led to a criminal investigation into the handling of these funds, resulting in several arrests and interrogations.

Although Hankó has not been formally charged, the opposition has criticized him for authorizing grants that allegedly benefited conservative artists and organizations. Allegations against him center primarily on his political accountability regarding the allocation of these resources.

We spoke with Hankó about his perspective on this case and the changes Hungary is undergoing under the new government of Péter Magyar.

How would you describe Magyar Péter to someone unfamiliar with Hungarian politics? Given his past within Fidesz, in what ways does he resemble Viktor Orbán, and in what ways does he differ?

To put it in terms drawn from American politics: Péter Magyar is as if someone had spent 14 years holding various posts within the Republican Party’s political community, then suddenly defected to the Democratic Party, and two years later were now leading the United States as the president of his new party. What is more, of the 16 years of Viktor Orbán’s governance, this new prime minister spent 14 in various government-linked positions — at times holding several posts at once.

His political turn came a little over two years ago, when he may have felt that his career prospects were narrowing. After that, he rallied 53% support behind what is even now a party of barely 30 people in the spring 2026 parliamentary elections — which, under the Hungarian electoral system, amounts to a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly.

He built his campaign on opposition to Viktor Orbán and to his own former community, even though he had for a long time been an adoring follower of the former prime minister. In doing so, he focused on the rejection of corruption and on opposition to the EU. His recurring campaign message was that he wanted to liberate Hungary from the “Orbán dictatorship.”

He owes his electoral victory above all to his presence on social media and — far beyond that — to a level of EU and globalist support, or more precisely to the international allies determined to bring down Viktor Orbán’s patriotic politics. In the end, I have not yet discovered many similarities between Viktor Orbán and himself.

What do you consider the main base of support for Magyar’s movement, and how much of a chance do you see for it to reshape Hungary’s political landscape?

According to various surveys, he gained significant popularity, on the one hand, among young people who inform themselves almost exclusively from social media and who — by virtue of their age and cultural characteristics — have always wanted change in any case. I would note that social media was far from providing a level playing field for the two competing political camps.

On the other hand, his base consists of those who fell for the manipulations of the predominantly opposition-leaning media and concluded that, after four government cycles, it was time for change. The third base — by no means an insignificant one — is made up of the supporters of those left-wing and liberal parties who turned their backs even on their own politically unwinnable communities to back Magyar, so that Viktor Orbán could at last be removed.

In the countries that fell under the oppression of Soviet communism in the second half of the 20th century — and mine is among them — there is a well-known practice: accuse your enemy of what you yourself intend to do. As I see it, this old practice is now returning to Hungary.

The Orbán government was accused of being anti-democratic and dictatorial — indeed, of being unwilling to hand over power and of intending to manipulate the elections. By contrast, Magyar Péter’s government has operated in an anti-democratic manner from its very first days and is systematically constructing a system of arbitrary rule. In just under three months, the new prime minister pushed through — with his own members of parliament — a constitutional amendment that, on a personal and retroactive basis, bars Viktor Orbán from ever becoming prime minister again.

Another constitutional amendment bars nearly two-thirds of the current opposition MPs from being re-elected, while this remains possible for every single member of Magyar’s own faction. He repeatedly humiliated the president of the republic — who had been elected within a constitutional framework — and then, with yet another tailor-made constitutional amendment, arbitrarily removed him from office overnight, years before his mandate was due to expire.

With overwhelming speed, and in flagrant breach of every democratic norm, he set about the immediate removal of high-ranking state officials, installing his own loyalists in their place. He forced out the prosecutor general and the president of the Constitutional Court and forced through a restructuring of the Constitutional Court itself. He even created a body — reminiscent of the darkest communist years — that is at once a political police force, a prosecutor’s office, and a court.

This calls to mind the State Protection Authority (ÁVH) of the Rákosi regime in the 1950s. What is unfolding in Hungary today draws on the template of the Tusk-style Polish transformation, but the processes at work are far more severe. All the while, the official institutions of the European Union and the international human-rights organizations that are so vocal on other occasions remain deafeningly silent. For a hundredth of this, the Orbán government would already have been crucified.

How are relations between Hungary and the European Union developing? Could his government change key policies such as border security or family support?

Given that Magyar Péter enjoys the backing of the European Commission and of leading European figures, it is to be expected that Hungary will receive the EU funds that are rightfully due to it but that have until now been withheld as a means of political pressure — or at least a significant portion of them. Altogether this could amount to €16 billion.

It is not yet clear, however — or rather, Hungarian voters do not yet know — what conditions must be met to obtain it and, within that, how migration policy, for instance, will have to change. We have very bad forebodings as to whether the unambiguous anti-migration policy pursued for more than ten years will be continued.

What is already plainly visible, however, is that they are preparing to reduce and phase out the sectoral taxes that had been levied on banks and multinational corporations to improve the livelihoods and living conditions of Hungarian families — and that, in place of a policy channeling those resources to families, global interests are taking center stage.

Looking back at the recent campaign, what do you think were Viktor Orbán’s biggest strategic mistakes?

I am giving my personal opinion here, because strategic-level analysis is still ongoing within Fidesz. On the one hand, major international actors joined forces and staked almost everything on bringing down the Orbán government. In recent years, the European Commission, the European People’s Party, and the left-wing European party alliances had treated Viktor Orbán as an arch-enemy.

There is a great deal of evidence that foreign intelligence services, too, became involved in the campaign — for the influence of Viktor Orbán’s patriotic politics had crossed Hungary’s borders. Amid the European and international globalist preponderance, Hungary embodied a patriotic example that pointed in a new direction, cutting across the traditional right-wing, left-wing, and liberal lines: namely, that one is either a globalist or a patriot.

Against this international coalition, we failed this spring to mobilize sufficient counter-force, largely because of the imbalances of social media. Beyond all this, a generation has come of age for whom Viktor Orbán had been prime minister ever since their childhood, and a kind of youthful rebellion set in against the “old folks” attached to conservative values. And compared with Fidesz’s central political message — which stood for continuity as the guarantor of security in dangerous times — Magyar’s camp’s 1,213 campaign promises were, for many, more appealing.

Some observers have expressed concern about political retaliation following a possible change of government. Do you think media outlets, academics, or public figures tied to Fidesz could face political or institutional pressure under Magyar’s government?

Over the past months, an unprecedented turnover of leadership has begun across the entire institutional system.

The public media has been silenced. For weeks now, neither public radio nor public television has been performing even its most basic functions. Television airs old films, radio mostly broadcasts music, and the news service has been shut down — even though this would be their most fundamental obligation. As a result, even the most elementary information — for example, the removal of the president of the republic — cannot reliably reach every segment of the electorate.

What is more, the editor-in-chief newly appointed to lead the news service at public radio was dismissed within a single day, after the current prime minister took offense at a two-word critical Facebook comment. The same happened to the head of the Parliament’s office — who had been selected through open competition — because he had previously worked as a professional in institutions linked to the former government. Several of the former leaders of my own former ministry are now unemployed, because no one will hire them for fear of reprisals from the current government.

So yes — people, professionals, and civil servants are clearly facing political pressure.

As for your own specific case, could you explain to an American audience what it involves? Do you consider it a form of political persecution? Why?

Trumped-up charges form the basis of show-trial proceedings against my colleagues and against me as well. On the basis of a government decision, and in accordance with defined principles, we provided support to 1,087 cultural programs from cultural funds over the course of two years. That amounts to 1% of the entire cultural budget.

A criminal complaint was filed over this. On this basis, seven of my colleagues have so far been named as suspects, and although the investigation has only just begun, several have already spent seven weeks in prison. They are being held in custody even though the funding review of these cultural programs was only launched after they had been locked up. Indeed, citing this, the authorities also seized the servers and the entire internal correspondence of the Fidesz party and its parliamentary faction.

The current prime minister and several members of the government have openly stated that they want to see me behind bars. Behind the complaint and the personal attack lies, on the one hand, the ultraliberal cultural circle that now supports the current government and that received less state funding in recent years, because politically and morally indefensible productions — such as a pedophile-themed puppet-theater performance, or plays that vilify Christianity — were not supported.

On the other hand, as in Poland, here too it is a declared and openly proclaimed political aim to imprison former ministers. Most recently — after the current prime minister attacked me personally — I was not even permitted to respond in Parliament, even though I am a member of Parliament. I regard this as open political persecution. I know this world from the accounts of my grandparents and my parents; under communism, my family already lived through such things.

On both my mother’s and my father’s side, I was raised in a nationally committed, anti-communist, and religious spirit. At my maternal grandparents’ home, house searches were carried out even at Christmas. My paternal grandmother was held for two years in a Soviet labor camp after World War II. Resistance to tyranny and the defense of truth are etched into our very cells.