Orbán-founded Brussels think tank MCC Brussels to close

MCC Brussels, a right-wing, eurosceptic think tank and lobbying organisation founded by Viktor Orbán’s government, is shutting down after its Hungarian state-related funding dried up, director Frank Furedi told Euronews.

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Furedi stepped down as director on Monday in protest after the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, MCC Brussels’ parent institution in Hungary, failed to provide further funding.

The Brussels-based think tank was established in 2022 with a pledge to “shake up European debate” and has maintained that it is independent, despite receiving funding from the Orbán government. In Brussels, however, it was widely seen as a vehicle for promoting the former prime minister’s vision for Europe. Its board of trustees was chaired by Balázs Orbán, Orbán’s political director.

MCC was largely financed through dividends generated by a package of shares donated by the Hungarian government. As that state-linked funding dried up, its Brussels affiliate was left without the resources to continue operating.

“In its present form, I think it’s finished,” Furedi told Euronews, adding that the Hungarian government — which sent a liquidator to MCC’s headquarters in Budapest — should honour its existing contracts.

Following the change of government in Hungary, incoming Prime Minister Péter Magyar vowed to dismantle Orbán’s political ecosystem and nationalised the assets of the foundation that runs MCC.

“We have given Hungarians back the right to control those common assets. We will keep the important programmes, but we will end a system in which public assets became the spoils of politics,” Magyar said in a video posted on social media last week.

Furedi, a former sociology professor in the UK who joined MCC Brussels after a long academic career and was a founding member of the UK’s Revolutionary Communist Party in the 1970s, is now calling for outstanding salaries and severance payments to be paid to MCC Brussels staff.

“A professional, democratically minded government would have said: ‘We hate MCC, we’re going to close them down. But we are going to give the employees their salary for the time they worked, as laid down in their contracts, and maybe a month’s redundancy payment,'” Furedi said.

He is now working on a new initiative with a smaller team, fewer resources and alternative funding, including fundraising.

At its peak, MCC Brussels employed 25 people, a figure that had fallen to 12 by this year. The think tank, which frequently criticised the European Union for a lack of transparency and for being ideologically driven, had a budget of around €5 million last year.

Furedi dismissed criticism of MCC Brussels’ spending on presentations, networking events and receptions.

“Everything we did was part of our work and part of our approach to work,” he said.

“We didn’t have the freedom to raise money. I wanted to charge for our receptions, but we were prevented from carrying out any financial transactions.”

Events organised by MCC Brussels were frequently targeted by Brussels’ Antifa movement, which accused the think tank of promoting far-right narratives. In June, the EU Transparency Register suspended the organisation’s registration, preventing it from engaging in lobbying activities and meeting with EU officials.