Rationalising Hungary’s Diplomatic Network Can No Longer Be Postponed

Hungary’s diplomatic network has expanded well beyond what its foreign policy priorities, institutional capacity, and professional standards can reasonably sustain. Any serious reform of the foreign ministry will have to address not only questions of cost, but also the structure, purpose, and staffing logic of its global presence.

Author: Dr. Georges Suha

The necessary clean-up is now driven not only by political pressure, but also by a slowly emerging and more open public mood. In this environment, greater attention can finally be given to detail, to professional proposals, and to rationality. It is no longer enough simply to point out the failures. More is required: concrete proposals and workable plans of action.

BAmong the many tasks ahead, one of the most important is the rationalisation of Hungary’s diplomatic network on a professional and realistic basis. Reducing the number of missions is not merely an economic question. It must also be understood in political and institutional terms: it is a reasonable, necessary, and unavoidable step. It would also have the side effect of removing a number of comfortable parking positions currently occupied by beneficiaries of the system.

At present, Hungary maintains 173 diplomatic missions worldwide, roughly twice the size of the Austrian or Finnish diplomatic and consular network. It is difficult to argue that this presence is proportionate or efficient. A significant part of the structure appears to function less as a network aligned with Hungarian foreign policy priorities than as a system of well-paid appointments. The past months of professional consultation, however, may help outline a package of proposals that could serve as a real starting point for a future foreign policy leadership.

The first round: missions that are plainly unsustainable

The first step in rationalisation would be the closure of one-person embassy offices and secondary or marginal missions that could be eliminated without disrupting Hungary’s diplomatic relations.

Africa is particularly affected in this respect. A logical and symbolic starting point would be the closure of the embassy in N’Djamena, Chad, accompanied by the shutting down of the one-person offices in Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Zambia, and the Congo. In their current form, these represent difficult-to-justify and costly presences, even if closing Chad would temporarily end Hungary’s diplomatic presence in French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa. That gap could later be filled by an embassy in Senegal or Côte d’Ivoire, but that is clearly not a task for the first hundred days.

In Latin America, the continued maintenance of Montevideo as an outpost of Buenos Aires, and Panama as an extension of Bogotá, would be difficult to justify in the future. Likewise, there are sound professional arguments for closing two Canadian consulates general, Montreal and Vancouver, as well as Hungary’s presence in Houston in the United States. In Europe, modernisation is equally overdue: the consulate general in Innsbruck, the one-person diplomatic presence in Lyon, and even the mission in Wrocław could be rationalised by strengthening the embassies in Vienna, Paris, and Warsaw. Some of Hungary’s consulates in Germany also appear more like cadre parking lots than genuine professional hubs.

Political and economic arguments also support the closure of two consulates in Russia, Yekaterinburg and Kazan, as well as the termination of the independent missions in Almaty, Dhaka, Cambodia, and Melbourne.

The absence of reciprocity and overvalued bilateral relations

Particularly urgent would be the closure of missions in countries that are not priorities in Hungarian foreign policy and whose governments do not maintain embassies in Budapest. In such cases, relations can be effectively managed through cross-accreditation or a roving ambassador. One of the clearest examples is the embassy in New Zealand, but the mission in Malta could also be placed in this category. In Africa, the embassy in Accra, and in Asia, the missions in Laos and Singapore, fall into the same group.

There is, however, another category: embassies where formal reciprocity exists, meaning that the partner country does maintain a mission in Budapest, but neither the depth of political relations nor the level of economic cooperation justifies the current Hungarian presence. Kuwait, Ecuador, Chile, Oman, and even Kenya may fall into this category. The same applies to missions operating for prolonged periods in civil war or severely unstable environments, such as Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria.

It is important to stress that no diplomatic service welcomes a reduction in international presence. Yet Hungary’s current network is oversized, disproportionate, and professionally unsustainable. Reform and streamlining are therefore not political gestures, but institutional necessities.

Staffing, functions, and personnel reform

Cost reduction and rationalisation would inevitably involve staff cuts. A radical phasing out of the foreign economic attaché system could alone mean the elimination of well over a hundred positions. At the same time, more efficient internal organisation could be achieved through relatively straightforward personnel decisions. In line with common European Union practice, one diplomatic officer could handle consular work at embassies with low consular traffic.

It would also make sense to extend the network of regional economic managers to all missions and to revisit the system of 249 honorary consuls. A first estimate suggests that this network could be cut by as much as half, while the remaining officials would assume greater responsibility and a more integrated professional role. Hungarian diplomacy also seems to have forgotten the cost-effective options of co-location or so-called laptop diplomats, even though shared infrastructure with other EU partners could generate significant savings.

The results of parliamentary elections have, in fact, offered relatively precise indicators of the actual size of the Hungarian diaspora served by specific missions. Following careful data analysis, the independent status of so-called community diplomats should be fundamentally abolished, as these tasks could be absorbed by diplomatic staff, career consuls, and honorary consuls.

Rotation, suitability, and transparency

Immediate decisions should also be taken to recall ambassadors and heads of mission who have spent more than five years abroad. The maximum duration of a foreign posting should be fixed at four years. Alongside staff reductions, some missions would also need reinforcement. Where closures place additional burdens on the consular network, capacity should be increased through the redeployment of consuls to the most logistically suitable nearby embassies.

It is therefore difficult to dispute that the number of missions, and in some cases the number of posted staff, will need to be reduced. Yet this can only be done alongside a full review of the network and a parallel effort to define and make more transparent the professional criteria for entry into the foreign service. At present, there is no meaningful entrance examination, leaving wide scope for the appointment of politicians’ relatives and protégés, sometimes even in the absence of basic professional suitability.

The case for maintaining any given mission should be assessed on the basis of a thorough review of its actual activity. Useful benchmarks would include the political, economic, and tourism significance of the host country or international organisation for Hungary, bilateral trade volume, and other objective indicators.

Reform requires credibility

These proposals can of course be refined, and some of their elements are open to professional debate. Yet some form of structural correction is indispensable if Hungary is to rebuild a credible and functional diplomatic service. The current network is not only oversized. It is also built on distorted incentives, weak professional selection, and an institutional culture overloaded by political considerations.

A serious reform should therefore not be understood merely as a cost-cutting exercise. The goal should be the creation of a diplomatic service that is proportionate, professionally grounded, guided by clear priorities, and genuinely capable of representing Hungary’s interests.

Cover photo credit: Gemini

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