Licence plate controversy reveals tense Hungary-US relations

The Hungarian Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office deliberately thwarted efforts to give American soldiers’ US-made cars local licence plates to gain political leverage on the United States government, report claims.

American soldiers stationed in Hungary have not gotten licence plates since 2021

In a recent speech at the Central European University, Budapest, the American Ambassador to Hungary, David Pressman, criticised the Fidesz government’s decision not to issue local licence plates to American soldiers serving at the Pápa Air Base in Hungary.

“[F]or more than three years,” Pressman said, “in violation of our Defense Cooperation Agreement, the Hungarian government has not allowed these young soldiers to get licence plates for their family cars, instead forcing them to pay tens of thousands of forints out of their pocket every month for temporary registrations. Not because of bureaucracy or red tape. Because the Hungarian government has made the political decision to do so.”

This issue, the Ambassador highlighted, is a symptom of a larger predicament, and is “indicative of the current, concerning state of Hungary’s relationship with its allies. The problem, he continued, is that Hungarian policymakers treat the United States as an adversary, “saying and doing things that undermine trust and friendship” between the two countries, while also isolating Hungary from its other allies.

PM’s Cabinet Office is the main political actor in the issue

The trouble over the licence plates that Pressman protested, and his argument that there is an underlying conflict between the two states being exacerbated by the Hungarian government, seem to have been true, according to VSqaure.org.

The platform shares in a newsletter that a former official of the Orbán government confirmed the Ambassador’s allegations, saying:

“It’s true, this is a political decision to mess with American soldiers and try to get the US to ask us to resolve the issue, so we can also ask for something in return.”

According to their source, every step of the process of acquiring documentation for the soldiers’ American-made cars – which need special permission to drive on EU roads due to different traffic standards – had been successful. But then, the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office stepped in and halted proceedings in 2021.

The Cabinet Office is headed by Antal Rogán, who is often called the “Propaganda Minister” of the Fidesz government because of his central role in the “increasingly anti-US, pro-Russian Hungarian government propaganda machine, as well as the intelligence services,” as VSquare puts it.

Indeed, for example, under his rule, the Cabinet Office paid – an unknown amount of taxpayer money – to have ads shown on YouTube about the dangers of illegal migration all over Central Europe to push Fidesz’s anti-migration narratives to the forefront of politics in the region, and he was also a crucial player in the recent presidential clemency controversy.

Between 2015 and 2023, the National Communications Office, which is part of the ministry led by Rogán, spent a total of HUF 1,360 billion (EUR 3.40 billion) on communication and event planning, illustrating how important he and his office are for the politics of the Hungarian government.

Apparently, when the instruction came to halt the licence -issuing procedure for the Americans stationed in the country, the state secretary of Rogán emphasised that the instruction was a purely political decision that must not be overwritten.

As for the future of Hungarian-American relations, things do not seem to be on a path of normalisation. As we reported, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó called the US Ambassador a “left-wing political activist,” saying that when Pressman criticises Hungary for supposedly undermining trust within NATO, he should not forget how many Americans had been evacuated from Afghanistan by Hungarians.

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Source: VSquare