Danube Dispatches — The Pilot
The “Diplomat’s Notebook” No. 1
About the author … Ambassador, Dr Nicholas Jeffery http://linkedin.com/in/nicholas-jeffery
Some people come to Hungary to understand it, others marry into it.
I did the latter, which, as any student of Central and Eastern Europe will confirm, is the more permanent form of accreditation.
My wife (the inspiration and co-author) is a Budapest-born architect and urban planner whose connection to the city is more identity than residence. She has always felt deeply Hungarian, through every political period, yet lately the news can feel overwhelming and biased enough that she inevitably turns it off, a bellwether of the times we live in.
This is the third time our family has lived here; the children attend a state school, speak with alarming fluency, Hungarian, English and German, and correct my Hungarian pronunciation with the confidence of citizens correcting a visiting diplomat. Our lives oscillate internationally, but Budapest remains the fixed coordinate, home, the point to which everything returns, whether pandemics, market conditions, or relatives as Christmas demands.
Professionally, I have spent three and a half decades navigating corporate restructurings, telecom transformations, distressed assets, M&A negotiations and investment strategy across Europe and beyond, including time restructuring PSINet Europe, leading Uniserve Communications, a public company in Canada, taking them from distressed to market darling, and working with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) as the head of Strategy and Investment Planning, for their Telecoms, Media and Technology Group. During that time, I have watched and navigated through systems, political and corporate mazes, and mused how they perform and behave under geo-politicial, financial and latterly conflict pressure.
But the focus of my observations is Hungary, home, a country from my perspective that is permanently under commentary and rarely under any deep examination. Living inside it, rather than observing it from conference panels in Brussels or Washington, produces a different perspective, and one that I would love to share and explore together.
This musing is therefore not an academic paper nor a diplomatic communiqué.
It is my personal letter from Budapest, as Hungary moves toward and beyond the 2026 general election.
There are countries that loudly announce their place in the world. And there are countries that also loudly insist the world has misunderstood them. Hungary has always belonged to both categories, but especially in the current political climate.
From the banks of the Danube, geopolitics is not practised so much as performed: a choreography
of sovereignty, suspicion and self-confidence, executed Globally while the rest of Europe argues about the dismantling of independent media and the family funds. Having paid taxes here long enough to earn opinions, and holding a passport that opens more doors than it closes, I offer these observations in the spirit of civic affection, mild exasperation, and that ancient Hungarian conversational tradition: saying one thing while meaning three.
A Passport, a Superpower, and the Curious Case of Relative Decline
The Hungarian passport, a small burgundy booklet, modestly crested and frequently underestimated at airport check-ins, now ranks comfortably among the world’s most useful documents. It appears to grant access to most of the planet with minimal questioning. I always believed that my passport issued by the UK, held that high esteem, but clearly Hungary ranks higher, and it begs the question why? This places’ Hungary in an interesting category: A country where its Global relationships with all the tier one, geographic actors is often not understood, and Hungarian political rhetoric alliance strategy is debated politically and often maligned.
Hungary is regularly described abroad as a democracy in retreat. Yet its citizens/residents travel, trade, work and invest internationally with remarkable ease and confidence, while several larger democracies increasingly find themselves explaining both their policies and occasionally their internal stability to border officials and to history.
One country is accused of backsliding. Another livestreams it.
From Budapest, the global order appears less a rules-based system than a diplomatic pick-and-mix. Brussels lectures, Washington moralises, Moscow glowers, Beijing waits patiently. Hungary hedges, economically agile, rhetorically defiant, culturally insistent on being interpreted in its own language.
As the 2026 election approaches, the public mood is neither revolutionary nor complacent.
It is pragmatic, experienced and faintly worried, but not amused. The polarisation between the population in the capital Budapest, and the regional districts splits generations and families a little like Brexit, with one front bench politician openly stating on TV, “I am with you, not with the capital”. More on State vs Capital, The Renaissance paradigm playing out again in the next “Danube Dispatches”.
Hungarians have lived through Ottomans, Habsburgs, Germans, Soviets, markets and consultants. They are difficult to alarm. The debate here is rarely framed as democracy versus authoritarianism.
It is framed as control versus independence, and quietly, whether anyone else is demonstrably managing things better. The current opposition party’s name, Tisza, carries historical weight. The river is the country’s second artery, but the political reference is to Kálmán Tisza, the 19th-century prime minister who oversaw rapid modernisation while balancing powerful neighbours, a recurring Hungarian profession. Infrastructure, education and Budapest’s grandeur largely date to that era.
So hopefully Hungarian politics will not repeat history so much as quote it with new actors.
Meanwhile, daily life continues normally. Children go to school. Cafés remain full.
My sons and I remain British citizens with Hungarian residency, a modern European compromise.
In the coming weeks, the temperature will rise, rhetorically first, (the poster campaigns, paid for by the taxpayer, positioned as information memorandums for the population, are dominating the eye line, espousing the virtues of the ruling party and the issues surrounding Brussels and Kiev), politically second, and economically soon after. Hungary rarely moves dramatically, but it almost always moves deliberately.
The election will pass; Hungary will remain, interpreted, debated, but ultimately itself. I welcome your reflections and look out for the next instalment: Danube Dispatches - The Capital Question.
Thank you, Nicholas Jeffery.