BUDAPEST, Jan 19 (Reuters) – Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar has tapped former Shell executive Istvan Kapitany for a senior economics role in his team, as he seeks to defeat nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban in an election in April.
How to revive the economy from its three-year slumber is a focus of campaigning ahead of the April 12 vote and Magyar’s centre-right Tisza party leads over Fidesz in most polls, though many voters are still undecided.
Kapitany, a former global executive vice president at Shell who also led a Hungarian association of executives between 2020 and 2025, said the release of European Union funding and predictable policies would help revive the economy.
Instead of supporting manufacturing megafactories, which has been a key plank of Orban’s policy since 2010, small local businesses should be made more competitive, he said in a Facebook video announcing his appointment.
A key task would be to restore confidence by creating a predictable investment environment, which Kapitany said had been marred by Orban’s ad hoc policy changes and by windfall taxes on certain sectors to plug budget holes.
“I would like this country to perform better and I am willing to work for it,” Kapitany said in the video.
“However, I would like to stress that there are no miracles. We need work, a decent approach, and corruption is obviously the death of business,” he said, stressing the importance of “a level playing field.”
Kapitany will work with Tisza fiscal and tax policy advisor Andras Karman, a former Erste Bank executive.
The EU has suspended billions of euros of funding over Orban’s rule-of-law reforms, forcing the government to cut back on public investments in a blow to the economy. Orban, in power since 2010, has said Hungary was no more corrupt than other EU members.
“We need to bring the EU funds home … We need to use them fairly and well,” Kapitany said.
(Reporting by Gergely Szakacs; Editing by Susan Fenton)
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