Just before the election, the Orbán regime distributed a fortune among its foreign cheerleaders

Átlátszó has been granted access the contracts of the Danube Institute, a key arm of the Orbán government’s network building among European right-wing populists and the MAGA world. Just before the election, the Danube Institute signed contracts with foreign partners for record amounts of public funds to make inroads on the Anglo-American right, and increasingly, in Asian countries.

The Lajos Batthyány Foundation (BLA), which operates the Danube Institute, a hub for the global populist right, has paid over 150 million HUFs (420,000 EURs) to its international fellows. In 2025, months before the election that led to the landslide defeat of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz, BLA doubled its spending to its foreign partners, mainly public figures of Anglo-Saxon and Western right-wing media and think-tank world.

Since 2021, the formerly private BLA has been operating as a so-called public-interest asset manager, distributing billions of forints in public funds, provided by Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister, led by Orbán’s second-in-command, Antal Rogán.

Although BLA professes to “support for democratic public life in Hungary”, its spending clearly reflected the interests of the ruling party, providing a fortune for Hungarian GONGOs campaigning for Fidesz-KDNP. Its main beneficiaries included groups such as the Center for Fundamental Rights, best known for co-organizing CPAC’s events in Hungary.

Hungary as MAGA’s test lab

BLA also supported Orbán’s effort to build an international network of the far right through an organization called the Danube Institute. We first covered DI in 2023: as we wrote at the time, the institute provided support in the form of research fellowships to numerous foreign public figures, particularly Americans close to Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Their contracts went beyond standard research grants:

DI fellows were also instructed to appear in foreign and Hungarian media, and to find new contacts in media, academia, and right-wing circles abroad.

Reading the publications by DI fellows, they tend to contain a uniform message: that the Orbán government is a leader in a rising international right-wing movement, whose policies could serve as a model abroad, particularly in the United States.

We have obtained DI’s research fellows’ contracts through public interest data requests. The total value of these contracts also increased year by year: in 2022, a total of 76.76 million HUFs (214,700 EUR) was paid to a few dozen partners; in 2023, the figure rose to 179 million (500,667 EUR) and in 2024, it reached 284.6 million HUFs (794,354 EUR).

However, our requests were not completely fulfilled:

BLA only allowed us to view redacted copies of the contracts, most of them lacking the names of the researchers.

BLA cited the EU’s GDPR data protection initiative and had fellows sign statements asking to have their names redacted from the contracts (despite the fact that they are receiving public funding from the state of Hungary, and that their names are otherwise freely available on DI’s website).

Regardless, several fellows’ names can be deduced from the topics of their research, the titles of their lectures and writings, and in some cases, their GDPR statements, including Timothy Burns, Carlos Roa, and British conservative politician Lord David Frost.

Record spending before election year

In 2025, DI’s partners entered contracts with a total value of more than 389 million HUFs (1,1 million EUR), more than any year before. The 2025 list includes contracts that expired will expire this year, meaning that even after the election, Orbán’s international admirers continue receiving public money.

Below is a detailed table of DI’s visiting fellows’ contracts. Where the name of the contracting party is known or can be clearly inferred, we have indicated this as well.

A typical DI visiting fellow receives a monthly sum well over the Hungarian median wage (usually in the 1,5 to 2 million HUF range). Some received fees for ad hoc assignments, with sums of several million forints for short, several-week-long projects – the highest amount going to British political scientist Timothy Burns, who, for example, received approximately 4.5 million forints in 2024 for holding a seminar.

Most contracts contain recurring elements: most partners are commissioned to prepare some form of research paper, sometimes on a specified topic wordcount, sometimes without specific details. Whether these are completed is unknown, as the BLA tend not to publish these studies.

Most researchers were also expected to appear in the Hungarian media, which typically involved giving interviews to pro-Orbán publications such as Mandiner or Magyar Nemzet.

Not standard research grants

Most contracts also stipulate that the BLA may, if necessary, ask researchers to participate in international conferences, in which case the foundation covers travel costs.

In addition to international conferences, two researchers also received funding to attend the Bálványos Summer Free University and Student Camp (also known as Tusványos) – a yearly festival held in Romania, the highlight of which is a speech by Viktor Orbán. Nearly all fellows were also expected to publish at least once in the semi-governmental publications Hungarian Conservative and Hungarian Review.

For example, American analyst Logan C. West wrote about Balázs Orbán’s “connectivity” foreign policy strategy in the 2024 July issue of the magazine ‘Eurázsia’. In the magazine’s promotional material, West is quoted saying that

“Hungarian diplomacy shows caution in the face of a chaotic past and is aimed at building a more stable future.”

Promotional image of the ‘Eurázsia’ issue with Logan C. West’s article

At the time, West received a monthly salary of 4,000 euros; appearing in Hungarian media was one of his tasks, along with organizing conferences, workshops, and other assignments. Several researchers also received funding to publish articles in foreign publications picked by BLA: most often, The Spectator, The American Conservative, The Economist, and The Wall Street Journal.

For example,

articles by Carlos Roa, one of the DI’s highest-paid researchers, on topics unrelated to Hungary appeared in the American Conservative and the Wall Street Journal.

Roa, who worked for over a year for a monthly salary of 10,000 USD, made foreign policy recommendations for the Trump administration in both publications.

Some partners received funding for their own existing publications and programs: for example, American philosophy professor

Peter Boghossian received funding for six episodes of his series Spectrum Street Epistemology.

Boghossian received a gross monthly salary of 5300 USDs until the beginning of this year, for which he had to continue producing his series, as well as appear in Hungarian media and provide advice on improving the DI brand.

Inroads with the British right

Besides the MAGA world, there significant overlap between DI’s fellows and the editorial staff of the British publication Unherd. Like The Spectator, Unherd is owned by the hedge fund manager Paul Marshall, one of the premier patrons of British right-wing media, who have also donated to the Brexit campaign in 2017.

We identified one contract, dated last summer and worth 5,000 euros per month, as Philip Pilkington’s contract,

based on its content (networking in the British media), as well as the researcher’s GDPR statement and research topic (the contract refers to security risks posed by Irish and Northern Irish extremists—Pilkington criticized Ireland’s liberal shift in a study published on the DI website). Pilkington, who is also a researcher at the Hungarian Institute of Foreign Affairs and the founder of the “Multipolarity” podcast, is a regular contributor to UnHerd.

Philip Pilkington, source: Hungarian Institute of International Affairs

Gavin Haynes also works on the podcast, as well as UnHerd, in addition to his research at the DI. His name was also redacted; he presumably had a 7-month contract with a monthly salary of 4,000 euros.

Nathan Levine, who is also a fellow at the Heritage Foundation (Heritage also has a cooperation agreement with DI) has published slightly fewer articles in UnHerd. Levine, who worked for DI in 2024, was publicly received by Péter Sztáray, then State Secretary for Foreign Affairs.

Nathan Levine (left) with State Secretary Péter Sztáray. Source: kormany.hu

Eastern opening

In addition to its ties with the United States and Britan, DI’s efforts to build relationships with the East are also evident – this was especially the case in the past year. This is illustrated, for example, by the contract signed by Ibrahim Mammadov, head of the DI’s Turkic-Western Relations Program. Mammadov signed a one-year contract with the institute in November for a gross monthly salary of 3,000 EUR. According to the contract, his duties include building relationships within the Turkic world and representing the BLA at conferences held in Central Asian countries (for which the BLA covers travel expenses). The contract also stipulates the writing of a total of 10 articles, some of which are to be published in international journals selected by the BLA.

We also found a 12-year contract signed last December in which the unnamed contractor agreed, for a monthly salary of 5,400 USD to undertake, among other things,

“international networking, particularly toward China and South Korea.”

Another fellow, hired in March 2026 and working for a monthly salary of 5,000 USD undertook to build connections in the “American and East Asian” direction, specifically to identify and contact 10 contacts.

Sean Nottoli speaks to HírTV; source: Danube Institute Instagram

Sean Nottoli, who served as regional director for the Trump campaign in 2024, has an expertise on U.S.-Japan relations. We believe he is the signatory of a seven-month contract signed last September, which provided for a monthly salary of 5,000 USD and under which he undertook to build international relationships in the U.S.-Japan context.

A Hail Mary or preparing for the future?

This year, the institute signed six new research fellow contracts, totaling more than 66 million forints. A significant portion of these payments will continue through the second half of the year, meaning that foreign backers of the ousted Orbán government will continue to receive funds even after the change in government. One of them, whose duties include building relationships with Israel and the Middle East, will be able to work until the end of the year for a monthly salary equivalent to 7500 EUR, which is considered high even for DI.

Isaiah Smallman, the producer of the documentary “The Future Is at the Border” about the migration crisis, also received a last-minute one-time payment of 12,500 USD. The film was screened just before the elections, on April 8, at a grand premiere held at the historic Urania cinema. According to a report by Mandiner (a magazine published by MCC, another arm of Orbán’s international influence operation), the premiere also served as a last-minute campaign event:

“This Sunday, we are not electing a government, but deciding our fate,” said Dr. Dezső Tamás, chairman of the board of trustees of the Batthyány Lajos Foundation, in response to all this during his speech a few days ago at the Uránia National Film Theater, prior to the screening of *The Future at the Gate*. “And as the film reveals, many Western countries now regret that their governments were unable to adequately handle the migrant issue over the past decade,”

the magazine reported.

In addition to paying visiting researchers, film production and organizing their own conferences were also among the main activities of the DI and the BLA. In May, for example, they screened the film “Magyarok” (Hungarians), published by the institute, and previously, the DI organized an annual geopolitical forum in collaboration with the American Heritage Foundation.

We have also submitted a public records request regarding the costs of the films and events; our next article will cover these.