Sovereign Dependence: Hungarian Market Economy in the European Union

Like many Eastern EU member states, Hungary has developed an economy heavily reliant on foreign capital inflows and foreign investors. Within this framework, the export performance of foreign investors has significantly contributed to economic growth and facilitated the rapid integration of Hungary’s domestic economy into the global market. However, this model has also specialized the country in low value-added segments, thereby reinforcing its semi-peripheral status. While the left-wing governments of the 2000s did not challenge this economic structure, the global financial crisis of 2008 and the rise of the right-wing Orbán government in 2010 marked a shift. Dependency became politicized, accompanied by anti-FDI rhetoric and a turn toward economic nationalism. This chapter demonstrates that adherence to the EU’s economic governance rules provided the Orbán government with greater policy space in domestic affairs, enabling its authoritarian and sovereigntist turn. Paradoxically, playing by these rules allowed for relative political sovereignty until the COVID-19 crisis. Nonetheless, economic nationalism did not reduce Hungary’s dependence on foreign capital but instead diversified the sources of its external dependency. As a result, successive Hungarian governments have failed to modernize the economy over the past twenty years, and there has been no significant shift toward higher value-added activities. Instead of moving closer to the economic center of the EU, Hungary has remained in the semi-periphery.