Despite the fact that not a single government-commissioned feasibility study or background analysis could justify its necessity, Viktor Orbán’s administration resolved to spend vastly more public money than originally planned on the Mohács Danube bridge. By the time it is completed, it will cost more than half of Hungary’s entire annual higher education budget, yet it is expected to see scant use. In this sense, it may come to stand as a symbol of the Orbán system itself.
Nothing justified a new Danube bridge of this scale, nor a road of such width
It is hardly controversial to observe that every mayor and every constituency MP regards their own town or district as paramount, lobbying as vigorously as possible for central funds. The same dynamic plainly applied in the case of the Mohács bridge. Yet, rather than being dismissed for lack of justification, the project was embraced by the government, expanded, and further augmented just two days before the election.
Including associated developments, the total cost has now risen to around HUF 450 billion (gross), equivalent to more than half of Hungary’s annual higher education budget. All this despite the fact that, according to Transport Minister Dávid Vitézy, who addressed the matter at a press conference yesterday, no prior calculations supported the construction of a dual two-lane bridge and its accompanying dual carriageway.
It would have been among the least utilised bridges
Vitézy maintains that while a bridge may well be needed, neither traffic data nor earlier studies support the current, extraordinarily costly design. According to analysis by G7, a more modest two-lane crossing might have been defensible, hardly essential, and arguably a poor use of funds, but at least justifiable on regional development grounds.
By the outlet’s estimates, such a bridge would still have carried more traffic than the Tomori Pál Bridge between Kalocsa and Paks, opened in 2021, or the Szent László Bridge north of Szekszárd, built in 2003.
How costs spiralled
Under 2020 plans, the more modest two-lane crossing would have cost HUF 66 billion. By the start of works in 2024, sectoral inflation had reached 104 per cent, effectively doubling the figure to around HUF 130 billion, to which further inflation between 2026 and 2030 could reasonably be added. Yet two years ago a contract (complete with contingency) was already signed at a net HUF 300 billion with László Szíjj’s Duna Aszfalt, suggesting an overpricing of some HUF 100–120 billion.
Duna Aszfalt has routinely secured such government contracts; it is perhaps not irrelevant that in 2020 then foreign minister Péter Szijjártó was photographed aboard Szíjj’s yacht.
Further costs arose from upgrading not only the bridge but also the connecting road to a dual two-lane configuration, adding another net HUF 60 billion. The result is that construction on Hungary’s flat Great Plain has proved more expensive than comparable projects in mountainous Croatia.
A monument to the Orbán era
Yet the project is not merely overpriced; in its current form it is arguably senseless. The ministry led by János Lázár has claimed that Serbian freight traffic will be diverted here, but even its own feasibility studies make no such assumption. Those documents indicate that daily traffic on the bridge will not, even decades hence, reach levels that would justify a dual two-lane structure.
Projected daily traffic is put at roughly 5,000 to 8,000 vehicles, whereas a two-lane bridge could safely accommodate 15,000 to 20,000 vehicles per day. Below 10,000 vehicles, such an oversized structure becomes difficult to justify.
According to Vitézy, the scale of the project appears to have been driven not by genuine transport demand but by political considerations.
G7 argues that the bridge may thus become a memento of the Orbán system’s 16 years: an illustration of how hundreds of billions in public funds were poured into iron and concrete, steel and asphalt, not merely dubiously, but pointlessly.
Our previous article in the issue: Orbán cabinet is building pointless Danube bridge for tremendous money while Budapest bridges rot – photos
New proposal: make it partly rail
The Hungarian Transport Club, in a statement issued just an hour ago, likewise described the investment as misguided. However, it suggested salvaging what can still be salvaged so that, in a few decades’ time, it might at least appear that “something of value was created here”. To that end, it proposes considering the partial conversion of the structure into a railway bridge.
From a rail perspective, the case is stronger: such a development could reduce the fragmentation of Hungary’s rail network caused by the Danube, facilitate a Pécs–Szeged connection, integrate Baja into the system, and improve access to the town from Budapest, particularly if the Budapest–Belgrade railway line is completed.
Fidesz responds: the bridge is needed
Fidesz, for its part, has suggested that Dávid Vitézy should grow into the responsibilities of his office and study the Orbán governments’ national strategic documents. János Hargitai, an MP for the party, insisted that the Mohács bridge will form part of a “rural ring road”, playing a crucial role in strengthening east–west connections. He further argued that once the motorway network in Serbia’s Vojvodina region is completed, additional traffic will inevitably follow.
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