Hungarian socialist party elects new leader

The opposition Socialist Party elected Imre Komjáthi as its leader at the party’s congress on Saturday.

Komjáthi, a former co-leader of the party who on Saturday was elected for a two-year period, told a press conference after the vote that the party congress chose Lajos Korózs to be the deputy chairman and István Hiller the head of the national board. Komjáthi said the congress marked the start of the Socialist Party’s 2026 election campaign.

Imre Komjáthi. Photo: MTI/Hegedüs Róbert

“We will be the human voice of Hungarian political life,” Komjáthi said. “The Socialist Party will be the left-wing conscience of Hungarian political life.” Komjáthi, who is also an MP, told MTI that his party’s most important promise was that it would have a parliamentary group after the 2026 election. The first step towards achieving this, he added, was finding their 106 individual candidates. He said that having visited the party’s local chapters around the country over the last two years, he was aware of the state of the party, adding that the starting point was “promising”.

Komjáthi said 2026 was “too far away” for the party to be concerned with forming alliances, adding that in the summer they had reached out to the left-wing parties and movements that were “finding their place”. The Socialists, he said, wanted to be a home for these left-wing movements, but “time will tell if this will evolve into an electoral party or an umbrella organisation”. He said he will nominate a new party director who is not a politician at the first meeting of the party’s board. Komjáthi and Ágnes Kunhalmi resigned as the Socialists’ co-leaders in June over the result of the European Parliament and local elections.

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