HUNGARY: Prime Minister-elect Péter Magyar has nominated public transport specialist Dávid Vitézy — a former head of Budapest transport authority BKK — to serve as the country’s next Minister of Transport & Investment.
Vitézy has been asked to carry the transport brief following the general election on April 12 that brought an end the long-running Orbán administration. Vitézy has already announced that his key priorities include turning main railway stations into urban centres, developing public transport and active mobility in Budapest and regional centres, as well as to creating integrated urban networks and integrated fares across the country. He is also keen to see investment in Budapest keep pace with that seen in other capital cities in the central European region.
Vitézy started as a public transport campaigner before he was named the inaugural head of Budapest transport authority BKK in 2010. He also served briefly as Ministerial Commissioner at the Ministry of National Development and Secretary of State for Transport during the Orbán years.
He was CEO of the Budapest Development Centre from 2020 to 2022 and Director General of the Hungarian Museum of Science, Technology and Transport from 2016 to 2022. He had been a member of Budapest’s city council from 2024 until April 24 when he announced he was stepping down.
‘I entrusted Dávid Vitézy with the task of leading [national railway group] MÁV out of this chaos, starting the implementation of the transport and urban development programme of [Péter Magyar’s] Tisza party, and, with the utilisation of EU funds to be regained following the regime change, launching the second golden age of Hungarian railways’, Magyar said. This was a reference to the so-called ‘iron minister’ Gábor Baross, who was a key figure in the development of railways in the late 1880s.
‘The Prime Minister asked me to work on the implementation of the programme of Tisza party — one of the key elements of this is to eliminate the crisis that has been going on for years and finally make the development of Hungarian railways a government priority, similarly to other European countries’, Vitézy added when his nomination was announced.