Hungary’s incoming Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s pick for justice minister, Márton Melléthei-Barna, has withdrawn his name from consideration for the post amid criticism over family ties.
Melléthei-Barna, who is Magyar’s brother-in-law, announced the decision in a post on social media, saying he wanted to avoid casting a “shadow on the regime change” in the central European country.
A lawyer by profession, Melléthei-Barna is a university peer of Hungary’s next Prime Minister and was one of 10 founding members of the Tisza Party when it was set up in 2020. He served as the party’s legal director.
He has held several other roles within Tisza requiring legal expertise, including as head of various sub-units and as party representative on the National Election Committee during the 2024 European Parliament elections.
Magyar was forced to defend his initial pick due to the family link between the two men. Melléthei-Barna is married to Magyar’s sister, Anna Ilona, a fact the Prime Minister-elect previously described as having posed a serious dilemma for him.
Hungary’s incoming leader was criticised over the nomination, primarily by figures in the now opposition Fidesz party, which was ousted from office when Tisza won the April 12 parliamentary elections by a landslide.
In a roughly six-minute video uploaded to social media on May 7, Magyar said his Government would focus on bringing home EU funds, kick-starting the economy and improving public services. He added that healing the wounds of the past decades, reuniting the Hungarian nation and bringing justice to those who allegedly committed crimes under the previous administration would also be priorities.
In a comment posted under his social media announcement, Magyar thanked Melléthei-Barna for his decision and said his brother-in-law would have made an excellent justice minister.
The Prime Minister-elect has now asked Márta Görög, Dean of the Faculty of Political Sciences and Law at the University of Szeged in southeast Hungary, to take up the role.
The new Hungarian Government will be sworn in tomorrow, which is also observed as Europe Day. The date commemorates the May 9, 1950 Schuman Declaration, put forward by Robert Schuman, which proposed pooling the French, Italian and West German coal and steel industries and laid the foundation for the European Union.
Magyar’s Tisza Party defeated long-standing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz in last month’s vote. The result is set to reshape Hungary’s relationship with Brussels after years of clashes between Orbán and EU institutions over rule-of-law concerns and the disbursement of frozen EU funds.
