Hungary is preparing to elect a new President of the Republic, but the debate is not merely about filling a constitutional office. It is also about whether we understand the nation as a shared political community or as a club belonging to the winners of the latest election.
A new PROSUM Foundation policy paper argues that Hungary’s emerging defence industrial base should not be dismantled, but strategically consolidated, depoliticised and integrated into NATO and EU defence planning.
Beyond political slogans, the real question is whether children receive the knowledge, trust and institutional support that can actually keep them safe. While public debate is often dominated by myths about “gender-changing preschoolers” and a vague, threatening “gender lobby”, far too little is said about what truly matters: the actual protection of children. Yet this is not primarily an ideological question. It is a deeply practical one. Are we able to prepare children in a way that helps them stay safe in an increasingly complex world?
As the collapsing Orban era gradually shuts down one pro-government media outlet after another, and Hungary edges closer to becoming a country without a single national printed daily newspaper, something new is arriving.
Why wage increases alone will not bring social care professionals home. Over the past few years, the idea of returning home has occurred to me more and more often. Not out of nostalgia, and not because of some romantic sense of homesickness. Rather, because I genuinely wanted to believe that one day Hungary might also need the knowledge, professional perspective and practical experience I have gained abroad over the past decade.
Why Central Europe needs a climate-policy architecture that rewards investment rather than absorbs industrial capital. Hungary’s position in the debate over Europe’s Emissions Trading System is more important than its size might suggest.
In debates about the demographic crisis, we too often ask why young people are not having children. We far less often ask them what kind of world they are expected to start a family in.
I thought that after earlier debates around naturalisation, there was little left that could surprise me about Hungarian citizenship policy. I was wrong.
A personal story about emigration, integration, motherhood, homesickness, and what it means to return from a country that offered security but never fully became home.
Hungary’s demographic debate often asks why younger generations are not having children. A more difficult and perhaps more useful question is what kind of economic and social environment has made family formation feel increasingly risky rather than natural.
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