Szentkiralyi: We Cannot Allow Budapest to Be Controlled from Abroad

"If the city leadership continues to conceal whom they collaborated with, we will investigate the facts ourselves," said Alexandra Szentkiralyi, the pro-government faction leader of the Budapest City Assembly, in an interview for Magyar Nemzet. She emphasized her trust in the Assembly members' commitment to transparency.

Budapest City Council Member Alexandra Szentkiralyi . (Photo: Zoltan Havran)

Transparency proposal

At Wednesday's Budapest Assembly meeting , the Fidesz–KDNP faction is submitting a proposal aimed at enhancing transparency. The document, signed by pro-government assembly members Anna Szepesfalvy and Daniel Szecsenyi, would require the mayor to provide a detailed report on which USAID-funded organizations have established any legal relationship with the Capital City Council. The proposal seeks to clarify the rapidly escalating scandal in recent days, which has revealed that almost all Hungarian leftist-liberal pressure and lobbying organizations have connections to the city administration.

Since 2019, Budapest’s liberal city government collaborated with 20 civil organizations receiving U.S. Democrat-linked funds,

The Open Budapest working group, established in 2021, included lobby groups like Okotars Foundation, Civil College Foundation, Nonprofit Information and Education Center (NIOK), Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (TASZ/HCLU) and Amnesty International Hungary. Over the years the working group met on nine occasions. Notably, K-Monitor’s munipality expert Miklos Merenyi and Okotars’s Veronika Mora participated in most meetings. Mora, key role in European lobbying networks, was highlighted in a recent Sovereignty Protection Office report.

Budapest Assembly also supported these groups through the "Capital City Civil Organization of the Year" award, making them more acceptable to the Hungarian public. Last year, among the nominees that could be selected in an online voting process were ten left-wing supported organizations. 

Major funding for the ten organizations came from among other sources the Open Society Foundations, the Okotars Foundation and the Norwegian Civil Fund - all prominent in foreign pressure group circles.

During the Chain Bridge reconstruction, the Budapest Municipality commissioned Transparency International, one of the most significant advocacy groups in the country, to monitor the public procurement process related to the renovation. The project later became the center of a major scandal.

Direct Support from Brussels

Foreign financiers and left-wing circles went so far as to fund the capital directly from Brussels sources. Under the leadership of Gergely Karacsony, Budapest received direct financial support from the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) program. The capital and opposition-led district municipalities have thus far accessed €253,000 (approximately 100 million forints), while districts led by the governing party did not receive such Brussels funding.

Leftist-liberal districts also received direct support from the Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (the predecessor of CERV), with municipalities reportedly gaining around 60 million forints (about 150 thousand euros). Once again, districts governed by Fidesz–KDNP were excluded from this allocation. The largest Brussels support benefiting left-wing municipalities, however, came from the Programme for the Environment and Climate Action (LIFE).

The capital and opposition-led municipalities together received €900,000, approximately 1.2 billion forints.

Karacsony’s chief advisor on city diplomacy, David Koranyi, likely played a key role in the continuous flow of these funds and the network built around the capital. Koranyi was involved in foreign influence efforts ahead of the 2022 parliamentary elections through organizations such as Action for Democracy and DatAdat. He is connected in various ways to foreign lobbying attempts, with Action for Democracy tied to individuals close to George Soros. The organization also received backing from the American German Marshall Fund (GMF) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).