Hungary’s foreign minister Péter Szijjártó travelled to Beijing in early September to attend China’s commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and held talks with Foreign Minister Wang Yi on deepening economic ties, positioning Hungary again as the EU capital most eager to cultivate Beijing. The visit coincided with China’s Victory Day military parade, a highly choreographed projection of power in which Xi Jinping was flanked by Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un—an optic that underscored an emerging axis of revisionist states and drew a largely Western boycott.
While Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico and Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić were among the few European leaders on the rostrum, Szijjártó represented Budapest at the event and publicly cast Hungary as a “bridge” between East and West. For Brussels, the problem is that the bridge looks increasingly one-way. The European Union’s policy toward China since 2023 has been “de-risking,” not decoupling: tightening scrutiny of sensitive technologies, mapping dependencies, and using trade defenses while still seeking cooperation where interests align. That framework now includes countervailing duties on Chinese electric vehicles and a China-initiated WTO dispute (DS630) challenging those measures. When a senior EU official appears at a parade framed by Putin and Kim, the symbolism cuts directly against the Union’s attempt to maintain leverage through unity and measured pressure, and risks advertising a loophole Beijing can use to divide member states. The economics are not risk-free either. Hungary has become the single largest European destination for Chinese FDI—31% of the European total in 2024, driven by capital-intensive EV and battery projects—giving Budapest short-term wins but concentrating exposure to a single political and industrial ecosystem.
That exposure is already colliding with on-the-ground realities: the CATL battery megaproject in Debrecen has faced court setbacks and persistent environmental protest over water, waste and local impact, and BYD’s flagship EV plant timeline in Szeged has been clouded by reports of delays even as officials issue reassurances. Such turbulence is normal in big industrial bets, but when a third of China’s Europe-bound investment funnels into one country, each hiccup becomes a macro risk—and an obvious lever for political pressure.
Strategically, the optics are worse than the deal-making. The parade was designed to signal a world in which authoritarian powers make common cause; most Western representatives stayed away precisely to avoid legitimizing that message. For an EU and NATO member that benefits from European market access, cohesion funds, and collective security, the photo-op value in Beijing is outweighed by the reputational cost in Brussels and allied capitals, where Hungary’s presence is read as daylight between Budapest and a common European line. That daylight could matter in future intra-EU horse-trading—from trade defenses and subsidy control to Ukraine policy—and it could reduce the Union’s willingness to go to bat for Hungary when hard choices arise over tariffs, state-aid exemptions, or rule-of-law conditionality. In pure realpolitik terms, Szijjártó’s trip may help land another tranche of factories and headline MOUs; in grand-strategy terms, it deepens asymmetry with China, weakens EU bargaining power by signalling disunity, and ties Hungary’s economic fortunes closer to a supply chain and security architecture that the rest of Europe is actively trying to hedge against. That is why, even judged pragmatically, it was not a particularly good decision.
