Balázs Orbán has resigned as chairman of the board of trustees of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), Hungary’s largest private educational foundation and a pillar of the country’s national-conservative movement.
His departure on June 20 came as Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s Tisza party pressed ahead with constitutional changes that would reshape the legal status of MCC and other foundations created under former prime minister Viktor Orbán.
Balázs Orbán, no relation to the former prime minister, served as Viktor Orbán’s political director until this year and ran Fidesz’s campaign in the April election that it lost to Tisza.
Board member László Madarász was elected to succeed him, MCC said. Balázs Orbán said he had opposed the changes in parliament and would continue to do so.
“I cannot stand by while this work is being dismantled,” he wrote, accusing the new government of pursuing destruction rather than construction.
Founded in 1996, MCC has grown into one of central Europe’s largest talent-development bodies, offering free programmes to thousands of students and running centres abroad, including in Brussels.
Under the proposed amendment, the state would exercise founders’ rights over such public-interest foundations and reclaim state-derived assets should they be wound up.
The overhaul forms part of a wider drive Magyar has branded ‘Operation Purgatory’, aimed at dismantling what he calls the mafia state built during Orbán’s 16 years in power.
Parliament has already capped prime ministerial terms at eight years, blocking any return by Orbán, and the government would also remove President Tamás Sulyok and impose term limits on sitting MPs.
The government would also set up a National Asset Recovery and Protection Office to reclaim what it terms unlawfully diverted public funds.
The reforms are tied to an August deadline to unlock some €16.4 billion in EU funds frozen during Orbán’s tenure over rule-of-law concerns.
Fidesz, now in opposition, has condemned the drive as an abuse of the majority Magyar won in April.
