In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Benedek Jávor – Head of the Representation of Budapest to the European Union – discusses his current role and the evolving relationship between the European Union, the city of Budapest, and the Hungarian government; reflects on the green transition and critiques Hungary’s current energy policies; and pleads for talking responsibility locally.
The conversation was recorded at the Budapest Forum for Building Sustainable Democracies
Ferenc Laczó: You have headed the Representation of Budapest to the European Union since 2020. The Municipality of Budapest is led by political forces that are in opposition to the Orbán government, we might even say to the Orbán regime as it exists today. You were a green member of the European Parliament in previous years, and also acted as a member of the Hungarian National Assembly at a time when you were also co-president of the party Dialogue for Hungary. Your current role involves, among others, representing city interests in the EU’s decision-making bodies, exploring funding opportunities for urban projects and developing networks with other European cities. What are some of the main priorities you have set in this role as representative of Budapest to the EU? Which are some of the recent accomplishments you would like to highlight?
Benedek Jávor: First of all, it makes sense to clarify that the representation of Budapest to the EU is not a special institution. Most of the European capital cities and regions have their own representation office. The role of these offices varies – from cultural diplomacy through participation in international networks and umbrella organizations like Eurocities, Polis or others and in European-level NGOs, to following the decision-making of EU institutions, the European Parliament and the Council, what kind of regulations are in the pipeline which could influence the competencies of cities and municipalities, all the way to lobbying at the Commission regarding EU legislations or regarding other interests of the cities.
For Budapest, for obvious reasons, the most important priority in the past few years has been to build up a strong cooperation with the European Commission regarding EU sources and EU funding for Hungary, and especially for the city of Budapest. This has meant different kinds of activities. It includes trying to map possibilities for the city which are directly managed by the Commission, scan calls for proposals or to find sources for the city, and to contribute to good applications and some follow-ups of those applications to get funding for the city. We were quite successful in that. Many important EU funding projects are ongoing currently in Budapest – in sustainable social housing, for example, but also in nature restoration, which cost up to 5 billion HUF or some 12.5 million Euros.
Another important area of our activities has been lobbying for direct funding for cities in general. This took place in the early years, back in 2020-21, when the current European Multiannual Financial Framework was still under discussion in the institutions. They tried to include elements to the proposed regulation which would open up possibilities for the cities to acquire better access to EU funding or strengthen the participation of local city governments in decision making, control and management of such funding. We arrived at a quite late stage to this project, as the 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) was more or less already decided by the time we started our lobby activities. Still, we were able to add some important paragraphs or proposals to the adopted regulation.
Our third priority was to follow the discussions between the Hungarian government and the European Commission in the area of cohesion and structural policy funds – which are basically the operational programs in Hungary.
We saw that the Hungarian government originally planned to completely exclude Budapest from EU funding, and so a main priority was to convince the EU Commission that this is unacceptable.
It goes against EU law, as the distribution of the fund should be politically non-discriminatory – it is a clear violation of the obligation by the Hungarian government.
After a long discussion — and this is perhaps the single most important accomplishment of our five years of activity — in the adopted operational programs, compared to the originally planned zero funds, we have secured close to 300 billion HUF in development funds for Budapest for the seven-year budgetary cycle. Of course, this is just a small part of the entire EU funding for the country. However, it approximately equals the city’s annual budget: it’s a major and significant contribution to the city’s funding opportunities, providing a chance to invest in developments such as public transport, green spaces, and other important areas.
FL: You are not only the chief representative of a major city in Brussels but also a green politician allied with the green Mayor of Budapest, Gergely Karácsony. One of the signature policies of the last European Commission has been the European Green Deal that was introduced back in 2020 and aims to the make the EU climate neutral by 2050. The urgency of such a transformation has only become more evident in recent years. However, we have also seen quite a backlash against green policies. Green parties have also clearly underperformed at the elections to the European Parliament back in June. What would be your assessment of the green transition within the EU until now? What has been achieved and how adequate are those achievements? How grave a danger does the rather vocal opposition heard in certain corners pose to the future of this transition?
BJ: There is a lot of talk about the potential backlash to green policies in the EU. It was the case before the European elections but has also been the case since. I am not so pessimistic regarding European green policies.
You mentioned that the green parties at the European elections got fewer seats in the European Parliament than before. I don’t regard that as a dramatic or a catastrophic development. In fact, what happened is that in 2019, green parties had an enormous success, and the size of the green group increased considerably. In this year’s elections, what happened is that the size of the Green group returned to its size from before — what it was like in the time when I was in the European Parliament between 2014 and 2019. It’s not a collapse. Perhaps what we had in the previous cycle was something outstanding, maybe even unnatural.
At the same time, it’s important to note that – despite the fact that the importance of the Green group diminished as a result of the elections and that some extreme right or conservative political forces slightly increased their numbers – to have a reliable and safe majority to vote in favor of the Commission’s initiatives and Ursula von der Leyen’s regulatory plans, the traditional coalition of the European People’s Party, social democrats, and liberals is not necessarily safe enough or large enough. In many cases, that has been the case – Ursula von der Leyen needed green votes in the European Parliament to get elected as President of the European Commission. The Green group plays an important role in the European Parliament in ensuring the necessary majority for the President of the European Commission. This in turn means that the President should give some concessions to the green group to keep them in the deal and have them help maintain her majority.
If you have a look at the composition of the new Commission, which was announced a few days ago [the conversation took place on September 19, 2024], we see that green topics are still at the heart of the European Commission’s composition – we have an Energy and Housing Commission designate, we have the Green Transition Vice President, we have an Environmental Commissioner. At least four or five commissioners will be responsible to make the Green Deal happen in the European Union.
What I see is that some new priorities have emerged, like safety, defense, and security. Migration is also going to be a more important issue for the European Commission. But this doesn’t mean that the Commission has abandoned its ambitions concerning the green transition, not at all.
It’s also important to recognize that the period to design and adopt the fundamental elements of the Green Deal is already behind us. In the previous cycle, European decision-makers — the Parliament and the Council — adopted 90% of the necessary legislation of the European Green Deal. What is now important is how to implement that. It’s much more a daily exercise to control the implementation and enforcement of the legislative packages. In other words, we don’t have to expect big new initiatives. Keep in mind that in the Commission many commissioners will be responsible for overviewing, controlling, and pushing the implementation. I think we should be cautious but can be optimistic that the implementation of the Green Deal will be closely followed by the Commission and can happen in the European Union in the coming years. I’m not too worried about the future of the Green Deal — the situation is certainly not nearly as bleak as you sometimes read in the media.
FL: It is no secret that there has been a worsening disagreement and even estrangement between various EU institutions and the Hungarian regime led by Viktor Orbán. While the Orbán regime has appeared to become more isolated, somewhat ironically, Hungary currently, since July, holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. Orbán has been particularly eager to show that he has managed to build a new alliance and is no longer marginalized while alienating mainstream political forces within the EU even more. How would you describe the current relationship between the EU and the Hungarian regime? How has that rather tense relationship been reflected in the way Hungary’s Council presidency has unfolded till now?
BJ:
I believe that in the past few months, the relationship between the Hungarian government and the European institutions has gone through a major transition and the approach of the Hungarian government might also have changed.
For more than a decade, Prime Minister Orbán played a dual game: two steps ahead, one step back, always keeping alive the relationship with EU institutions and preserving the opportunity to make deals with the EU. He used all the forces he had to push for what he really wanted, but he was always ready for deals, concessions, bargaining with the European Union.
In the past few years — roughly since the beginning of the major Russian war of aggression against Ukraine in 2022 — this position has fundamentally changed. As far as I can see, the Hungarian government has abandoned this disposition of considering different potential strategic ways ahead. They are entirely stuck in one strategy: aligning Hungary with Russia, placing all bets on Donald Trump in the US, and associating Hungary and the Hungarian government completely with the European extreme right – not even the European Conservatives and Reformists, such as Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, but parties even further to the right.
I think it’s a very risky strategy. Seemingly, Orban expects that at a certain point, extreme right forces will make a breakthrough in the EU and then he can be an important player on the basis of his long-standing good relationships with them. But in case this doesn’t happen, he will be completely sidelined and isolated politically in Europe.There are worrying developments in this regard – for example, in Germany, where in some Bundesländer, extreme right parties have just won elections –, they are still very far from forming governments, even on the local or regional level, not to mention the national level in Germany. While we should be unhappy about the rise of the extreme right in Germany and other places, it is a very risky strategy for the Hungarian government to put all its bets on such forces in Europe.
At the same time, in the past couple of months, some decisions of the Hungarian government crossed some clear red lines – think of the decision to grant visa for Belarusian and Russian citizens in Hungary.
Our European partners in capital cities, governments, and EU institutions understand this as giving Russian services the opportunity to infiltrate the Union. They regard the Hungarian government and the country as one that poses a major security risk for the EU and NATO. I think this is completely different from anything we have seen before.
The discussions and conflicts over the rule of law or corruption in Hungary were, in a way, still within the limits of business as usual. Our European partners didn’t like too much what was happening in Hungary in terms of the rule of law and corruption, and they tried to take some steps to limit such developments. But none of that went against the fundamental security interests of the EU. What is happening now with the new visa framework is clearly violating and threatening European security – and our European partners understand it exactly this way. This closes down many communication channels between Hungary, on the one hand, and European institutions and member state governments, on the other. It’s a different kind of discussion now.
Most recently, we had two scandals. A Hungarian citizen was arrested in the US and accused of he trying to smuggle military radio equipment to Russia. Investigative journalists unveiled the fact that the Hungarian citizen in question had a strong and good relationship with the Hungarian government. In the past few days, revelations about explosives in Libanon and Hungarian links to this action raise serious concerns about how reliable a partner Hungary is when it comes to ongoing military conflicts on a global level. Either the Hungarian government doesn’t know what is happening in the country and didn’t know anything about the explosive pagers — like in the case when the US arrested a Hungarian citizen with close ties to the government over smuggling and the Hungarian government didn’t seem to know anything about it —, which raises the question: are Hungarian authorities able to control what is happening in the country? This is the more optimistic case and it still raises serious concerns. The alternative is that the Hungarian government may not be actively participating in these actions but has information about them and chooses to let them happen. That takes us to even more serious conclusions.
There are a lot of unclear elements related to these events. We don’t know much about the mysterious companies, including the Hungarian one, which, according to the first news, produced these pagers. Whatever the case may be, both options raise very, very serious concerns regarding Hungary as a safe and reliable partner for European member states, the European Union, and also NATO.
FL: How has the deterioration of that relationship impacted your own activities as the Head of the Representation of Budapest? How might your role be impacted by the fact that there is a less clear situation within the Budapest Municipality as a result of the recent local elections that were held on the same day as the elections to the EP?
BJ: The increasing tension between the European institutions and the Hungarian government has, of course, had some impact on our activity.
It helps us in a way because the Commission makes a distinction between Budapest and the Hungarian national government. They understand more and more the difficult situation the city is in within Hungary.
They are looking for solutions to help Budapest and opposition-led cities in the country under these difficult circumstances and during this conflictual relationship with the government. This helps us, for example, when we follow up on the implementation of the 2021-27 MFF in terms of whether the EU funding which should arrive in Budapest is really being paid to the city by the government or not. There is much more understanding now in the European Commission of our criticisms or concerns about what is happening in this area.
The post-2027 European budget is under construction at the moment – they’ve already started designing it in the Commission. The Commission plans to publish the first draft next spring, and we are involved in the process.
We are trying to lobby in the Commission to make the next MFF much more accessible for cities, partly to create direct channels of EU funding for cities, but also to give more money to those areas and issues that are important to cities.
For example, housing. For years, we have been lobbying the Commission, together with other cities and city organizations, and also with some political allies like the Socialists and Democrats or the Greens in the European Parliament, to pay more attention to the housing crisis in the big cities of the EU. It seems that in the new Commission, housing has been given a dedicated portfolio and there will be more funding for housing projects. We will try to ensure a much better seven-year budgetary cycle for cities, especially large cities that are responsible for fulfilling many joint European targets and goals concerning climate action, digitalization, social inclusion, and so on and so forth.
Regarding the political situation in Budapest after the elections, the picture is still a bit unclear. The negotiations are still ongoing, and we don’t see exactly how a functioning majority can be created in the city council. I’m not necessarily entitled to speak to the public about the details of those negotiations.
I can add though – and this is clearly a good sign – that most of the parties represented in the city council, with the exception of the Fidesz faction, expressed their interest and willingness to cooperate, perhaps not via building a political coalition, but at least to cooperate to make the city functional and take the necessary decisions on a case-to-case basis. How this will be done practically and in political terms, and what kind of deals must be made are questions of the future at this stage; the city council should sit together and adopt the fundamental documents. I hope that by October [the conversation took place on September 19], we will have a clear answer to these questions.
FL: We have discussed your role as a representative of Budapest, the relationship between Hungary and the EU as well as the green transition in Europe. How do you view Hungary’s ongoing green transition? What have been key achievements? What are some of the major shortcomings and how are those connected to Hungary’s dependency on Russian sources of energy?
BJ: Let me start with the question of energy dependency on Russia, which I think is something very, very worrying. We see that the entire European Union, except for Hungary, started to make itself independent of Russian fossil fuel supplies after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. While most of the EU member states have largely become independent of Russian supply in the past few years, in the case of Hungary, this dependency has even strengthened.
This means that Hungary is highly dependent on an aggressive, imperialistic Russia. It also means that there is a huge blackmailing potential for the Russian government and President Putin to influence Hungarian decision-making and the Hungarian government.
I think this is a huge risk for the country in political terms and it doesn’t serve Hungary’s energy security either. We see that Russian gas comes through Ukraine. Ukraine could decide to stop these transports at any moment. So we are highly dependent on gas supply from Russia, which is highly risky — and risky in a way that is far beyond the capacity of the Hungarian government to manage.
How the Ukrainian government will decide on the transport of Russian gas through Ukraine doesn’t depend on how good a relationship Peter Szijjártó has with Sergey Lavrov.
The Ukrainian government can make an independent, autonomous decision – the Hungarian government has very limited opportunities or possibilities to influence such decisions. So this dependency is highly risky and not only because of Russia but because of a more complex geopolitical setup. This is a huge risk regarding the future.
What I have said also means, of course, that Hungary remains highly dependent on fossil fuels. We have two problems with Russian gas: that it is Russian and that it is gas. Instead of trying to make the green transition and become more independent of fossil energy sources, Hungary has fixed its dependency on gas supplies. Its green transition has had very unbalanced results until now.
Perhaps the only positive change in the past couple of years has been that the government stopped blocking the development of solar energy in the country. It’s also evident that since the Hungarian government stopped actively blocking the development of renewable energy sources, there has been a revolution: close to 7,000 megawatts of solar panel capacity was constructed within a few years — a capacity more than three times larger than that of the Paks nuclear power plant.
Still, nothing truly significant has really changed in Hungary. Only a few months ago, they stopped the ban on wind energy. How wind energy will be allowed to step into the Hungarian energy mix is still quite unclear though. It appears that there will be heavy limits on it. Overall, there is still a strong limitation on the development of the renewable sector in the country.
Additionally, there has been no grid development in the electricity system. No energy storage capacity development has been pursued in the past 15 years, which creates huge tensions in the Hungarian electricity and energy system. This is because there is no strategic plan and no strategic development of the energy system. The cornerstone of the government’s thinking about energy is the construction of the Paks nuclear power plant through Russians. This is a political decision, not an energy policy-related decision; Paks is much more about building a strong relationship with Russia than about producing energy. The rest of what has been happening in energy policy has all been related to this political decision – another huge risk for the country.
It’s important to add that, besides the very unbalanced developments in the energy market, the adaptation measures Hungary desperately needs in times of climate change haven’t happened.
We see the consequences right now when there is flooding [the conversation took place on September 19]. The Hungarian water management approach and infrastructure are still about applying the same, 100-year-old considerations. They are not adapted to the new reality of climate change at all. We would need a completely different approach to water management, agricultural activity, spatial planning, urban planning, and development. Hungary is also lagging behind in mitigation measures, so we are not really contributing considerably to the EU’s emission reduction efforts, and the country is not prepared for climate change.
Taken together, these will represent one of the most important security risks for the country in the coming decades – these issues amount to a much more important risk than anything the government has tried to put forward as the most important issue.
FL: In closing, I wish to ask you about something slightly more personal. You have announced at the end of August that you would be running at the upcoming Belgian local elections in Etterbeek, a municipality of the Brussels-Capital region, to represent your closest community. Why has motivated you to do so? What importance and what meaning do you assign to this remarkable decision?
BJ: In the past more than 25 years, I have always been active in public life in different forms. I was an NGO leader for 10 years, then I was involved in green politics for almost 15 years at both the national and European levels. This means that I have always felt a responsibility for the communities I am part of.
According to European legislation, European citizens can vote and be voted for in the local elections where they live. We have lived in Brussels, in Etterbeek, for almost 10 years now, and I think it’s really important to be an active part of your community. This doesn’t mean that I don’t work for the city of Budapest anymore or that I’m changing my identity, but practically, we are living in a local community in Etterbeek in Brussels, and I have a good relationship with the local Green Party. They asked me to be on their list, and I think it’s a good opportunity to strengthen my relationship with my closest community, with the people I and members of my family live with.
I think it’s important to raise awareness that we have the right and the opportunity as foreign citizens living in Brussels to participate in the public life of our local communities and that foreign citizens all over the EU have the same right. There are many foreign citizens living in Budapest as well and they have that right too, of course. People should really make use of that.
We live in Etterbeek, we know what the problems are, we experience them. My children go to school locally, so we are familiar with many of the local issues. In Etterbeek, some 50% of the population consists of expats – people from outside Belgium who are living there. I think it’s extremely important to represent the interests of those who came from abroad but live there and are part of the community. You cannot live there in isolation and create a small Hungary that is completely closed off from your direct neighborhood. You have the responsibility and the chance to participate in the life of your local community. That’s why I decided to accept the offer from the local greens to be on their list and work with them.
Honestly, it’s huge fun to support the campaign, to get to know the local greens much better, and to participate in campaign events. It helps me better understand the place where I live. If nothing comes from this initiative other than becoming more involved in my local community, I think I will already be very satisfied.
The transcript has been edited for length and clarity in cooperation with Diana Bernardini.
The audio recording was edited by Lilit Hakobyan.
