Under Viktor Orban, the country became a battery superpower. Now, many are asking what role the industry will play in a new political era.
On a warm Friday evening in the central square of Debrecen, the largest city in Hungary’s east, hundreds gathered to protest a new industry – batteries – which in less than a decade has become one of the country’s largest. Chanting, “Resign! Resign!” the crowd directed their anger first toward the city mayor, a member of the former ruling Fidesz party led by Viktor Orban, whom they accuse of having enabled the battery boom, and toward the Chinese and Korean companies whose battery factories have transformed Debrecen.
As Hungary begins to chart a new course under Prime Minister Peter Magyar and his Tisza party, battery factories have become a flashpoint of anger against the 16 years of Orban’s reign. Many blame the former government’s corruption for the arrival of plants with questionable environmental and safety records staffed by hundreds of foreigners. For Magyar, who campaigned on stamping out corruption, protecting the environment, and clamping down on immigration, the enormous battery industry may prove to be the first test of whether and how he can implement those promises, and how post-Orban Hungary will look.
From Zero to World Leader in Batteries
Looming over the surrounding sunflower fields and supplier factories, the first phase of Chinese manufacturer CATL’s Hungarian gigafactory in Debrecen is already churning out hundreds of thousands of battery modules, each composed of a dozen or more battery cells, enough to power tens of thousands of electric vehicles. The current capacity of 40 gigawatt hours (GWh) is set to grow to 100 GWh by the time the plant is completed, and the total investment of more than 7 billion euros will be the largest ever in Hungary. The CATL plant joins some three dozen other projects in clusters around the country that represent every stage of battery production, from cathodes and separator films to finished battery cells and modules, and end-of-life recycling.
Peter Kaderjak, executive of the industry group Hungarian Battery Alliance, said Hungary already has 80 to 90 GWh in battery production capacity, mostly the advanced lithium-ion types used for electric vehicles or large-scale energy storage projects. Kaderjak said that capacity places Hungary alongside Poland for largest producer in Europe and fourth largest in the world. He added that existing expansion plans, like that under way at the CATL plant in Debrecen, in concert with the complex value chain growing in the country, are set to make Hungary by far the largest European battery producer. The growth has been rapid, he noted: “the sector has grown from nothing essentially back in 2017.”
CATL has signed deals to deliver batteries from Debrecen to nearby BMW and Mercedes-Benz plants, and other battery factories similarly have been sited next to existing automotive manufacturing and have agreed to supply local plants. While the industry’s exact contribution to Hungary’s total economy remains a subject of debate, Kaderjak said batteries now likely make up two or three percent of the Hungarian GDP and government representatives have claimed the sector exports up to 10 billion euros worth of products annually.
High Levels of Metal Pollution Spark Fears
But the rapid expansion has provoked anger among many Hungarians who live near the expanding plants. Bendeguz, a student in Debrecen, said he came to the early July protest to speak out against pollution and corruption. He blamed the previous Orban government, saying “his government basically put a plan to build a line of battery factories, highly polluting ones, on one of the best, most fertile soils in Hungary.”
A young couple, who live in the village of Sarand just a few kilometers south of the industrial park where CATL and a number of other battery suppliers now operate, likewise said they came to the protest in hopes that the government would shutter the factory. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the couple said they and their neighbors have been warned by the village mayor not to open their windows, and they fear the factory could impact their health, saying “they don’t inform us as they should of what effects it has, how many dangerous materials are going into the air and the water.”
Eva Kozma, co-founder of a group called Mikepercs Mothers for the Environment, named after another village near the factory, helped organize the protest. Afterward, she said she was happy to see so many attend a “lightning action” provoked by the government-mandated work stoppage at the SemCorp factory, which supplies separator films to battery plants like its neighbor CATL, after revelations of aluminum levels at more than 13,000 times the legal limit in groundwater around the plant. She also criticized Debrecen Mayor Laszlo Papp’s actions, noting that three years ago he stood on a stage with company leaders to inaugurate the SemCorp plant, but has recently called for the company to leave Debrecen. She said Papp is staging a political show as tides have shifted and is “occupied with saving himself politically.” The newly elected Tisza members of parliament for Debrecen have echoed her calls.
For Kozma, the battery industry played a major role in Magyar and his Tisza party’s April victory in Debrecen, once a Fidesz stronghold. “There are too many factories here,” she said, “they pushed it too far and yes, in my opinion, it came back to bite them.”
Marton Czirfusz, a geographer at the Periferia Policy and Research Center in Budapest and an expert on the battery industry, said the explosion of battery investments in Hungary starting in the late 2010s represented a convergence of interests between manufacturers and the government. In the context of the broader transition to electric vehicles, East Asian battery companies, he said, were looking to produce within the European Union for tax and regulatory advantages, and to be near the manufacturing plants of the large German carmakers in Hungary. The government meanwhile, he said, wanted to diversify the economy and attract new sources of investment.
A study Czirfusz authored found that between 2018 and 2022, the Hungarian government provided 188 billion forints (approximately 500 million euros) in subsidies to 16 projects at different levels of the battery supply chain, and media reports have claimed the later subsidies to CATL come to as high as $900 million. Czirfusz said Hungary has long offered state aid for investment, not just for batteries. But, he added, under the Orban governments, there was “room for maneuver by the state and state authorities [as] to how much they would look into environmental regulations or labor regulations … it is quite easy to say to the authorities, ‘you better not look into these contaminated water issues, or workers dying in factories.’”
Battery production lines constantly shift according to demand, supply contracts for specific vehicle models, and the emergence of new technologies, like sodium-ion instead of lithium-ion cells. Czirfusz said the resulting fluctuating employment and a labor shortage in Hungary means battery factory floors often have a mix of Hungarian workers, Chinese or Korean technicians and engineers, and third-country guest workers. In that environment, varying levelsof experience with the range of risks present, and miscommunications due to language barriers, can and have had dangerous consequences, including workplace injuries and even deaths.
Chinese Factory Follows Rules, Foreign Workers Say
The presence of these migrant workers has proved a hot-button issue for Hungarians concerned about the battery industry. At the July protest in Debrecen, one speaker slammed the companies, saying they resort to using foreign workers because of the “inhumane conditions” in the factories.
In June, Magyar’s government announced that it would stop issuing visas to guest workers from the Philippines and two other countries, citing concerns about employment for Hungarians and signaling stronger anti-immigrant policies than even Orban’s.
In an interview in the shared kitchen of the old apartment building in central Debrecen bought by CATL and converted to house around 130 Filipino guest workers, four men in their 20s and 30s described how they came to Hungary earlier this year via a labor recruiting agency. Asked what he liked about working there, one soft-spoken man answered, “first, salary” and said he supports a daughter back home with his earnings, around 1,100 euros monthly with housing included, more than 10 times what he could make in the Philippines. Another man, who previously worked in a car factory in Japan, said he likes the “work-life balance” of three or four 12-hour shifts weekly, which allows him to go hiking and to visit Hungarian bars in his free time.
But, when asked about changing immigration policies, the man said, “for me, I’m scared. I don’t know what will happen for the next months or years.” He added that CATL management has told them nothing will change for now, that the recruitment agency is still hiring, and that 35 new guest workers had just arrived for orientation. The rumor, he said, is that new Filipino workers arriving as the company ramps up production will simply be changed from agency-hired guest workers to direct company hires, a different visa category.
With respect to conditions in the factory, he pushed back on the protesters’ narrative, saying, “we also know that batteries are dangerous, but the company is good.” In his job in quality assurance, he added, he isn’t permitted to touch dangerous chemicals: “even using a broomstick, we are not allowed.”
Kaderjak said battery manufacturers “would love to employ Hungarian employees,” because they are cheaper than paying for travel and housing for guest workers. He said, “the sector was not happy with the further restrictions,” but like the workers said he has heard that foreign workers will still be able to be brought in for specific employers.
Czirfusz too corroborated the rumors, adding, “the problem is that we do not yet have anyone responsible for employment policy within the new government.”
New Watchdog to Monitor Battery Makers
In Göd, a commuter town just north of Budapest and the location of a Samsung SDI plant which opened in 2017 as the first large battery manufacturing facility in Hungary, the numbers and nationalities of immigrant workers have fluctuated over time. But Gergely Simon, a chemicals expert with Greenpeace Hungary, said the theme of company interests influencing lax regulation is constant.
Simon said that European legislation regulating environmental standards for battery production will not come into full effect until 2027, meaning, “basically it was up to the Hungarian authorities what they allowed them to do.” He pointed to a variety of practices, including allowing battery producers to operate as assembly plants without specific environmental permits for their complex activities, and setting emissions limits for plants like Samsung’s in Göd at levels for general volatile organic compounds instead of the much stricter levels for the carcinogenic, mutagenic, and reprotoxic solvents actually used in battery production.
Local NGOs in Göd have twice detected the hazardous solvent NMP (N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone) in drinking wells, Simon said. A local environmental NGO called the Association for Göd published a list of more than 60 violations between 2018 and 2024 at the Samsung plant of various environmental, code, and workplace health and safety violations for which they said the company paid a total of just 405 million forints (approximately 1.1 million euros) in fines. But media outlets sympathetic to the previous government often worked to discredit the claims of NGOs in Göd, and investigations showed the government worked to defend the factory.
Magyar’s government has announced plans to create a new body thatwill regulate battery factories, starting in September. The environment minister has likewise threatened to close battery factories that violate environmental regulations, and one new Debrecen member of parliament has stated he would not support further expansion of the CATL plant. But Simon said, “so far we don’t see that the new government [is] really wanting to involve NGOs into the discussions.” He continued, “I hope it will change, but we will see.”
From the industry side, Kaderjak said battery makers too are yet to hear a clear answer about how the new government views the industry, and what the future will hold. “Even within the new government and the party, there are really opposing opinions on it, and there are some members of parliament who really hate battery investors and would like not to see them, but of course, the prime minister seems to be kind of calm now, saying okay, we need these companies once they are here,” he said.
Kaderjak insisted that battery manufacturers are “willing and capable to keep any environmental standards that are set by the country in the European framework.” At the same time, he called it “completely crazy” that the green movement, with which the new Minister of the Living Environment Laszlo Gajdos is aligned, has become the biggest opponent of the battery industry, which Kaderjak said has been crucial to the energy storage that makes the transition away from fossil fuels possible.
Amid this summer’s record-breaking heatwaves, water levels in the Danube have dropped precipitously, forcing the government to announce the shutdown of the Paks nuclear power plant on 2 August and causing a major electricity shortage. Days earlier, Magyar announced a massive investment in renewable energy and 3 gigawatts of battery storage to be connected to the grid by 2030, framing the choice around energy independence and resilience. Almost simultaneously, however, the power crisis led authorities to order the very battery manufacturers that might supply that energy storage capacity to reduce their enormous consumption of water and electricity. Faced with both the environmental problems of the battery industry and deadly heat exacerbated by climate change, the new Hungarian government may be finding its options constrained.
Back at the Debrecen protest, not far from where the namesake Tisza river winds its way through the Hungarian landscape, people have high hopes for the new Tisza government. Anna, a pensioner, lamented that during the Orban years her son emigrated with his wife, as did hundreds of thousands of Hungarians. “They won’t start a family in this toxic country,” she said. But withrespect to the battery industry and so many of the other disillusionments of the last 16 years, it remains to be seen whether Peter Magyar can do what it takes to bring them back.
Larkin Cleland is a Hungarian-American journalist based in Ohio. He previously completed a Fulbright scholarship at the Hungarian Geographical Institute, has reported on the country’s politics for Jewish Currents and Ajam Media Collective, and helped produce the short documentary, Tesztpalya.
