Former Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán announced on Saturday that he will donate the severance payment due to him after leaving office to a Hungarian children’s home in Transcarpathia, joining several former ministers from his outgoing government in redirecting their compensation to charity.
In a post published on Facebook, Orbán said he would donate the money ‘which is due under the law’ to the Transcarpathian Merciful Samaritan Reformed Children’s Home. Orbán also shared a copy of the donation letter online.
According to recent reports, the former prime minister would have been entitled to approximately 38.8 million HUF in severance pay following the end of his 16-year premiership.
The announcement comes amid an escalating political dispute between Orbán and the new government of Péter Magyar over severance payments for members of the previous administration following the April election that ended Fidesz’s 16-years rule.
Earlier this week, Magyar publicly called on outgoing ministers and state secretaries not to accept the payments they were legally entitled to after leaving office, arguing that the previous government had ‘ruined’ the country. During a press conference on Wednesday, the new prime minister stated that his government would not authorize the payouts.
The move immediately sparked legal and political controversy. Critics argued that withholding the compensation could violate existing Hungarian law and potentially expose the state to lawsuits from former officials.
On Thursday, former Minister heading the Prime Minister’s Office Gergely Gulyás announced that members of the outgoing cabinet had agreed to donate their severance payments to a children’s home in Velyka Dobron (Nagydobrony), a predominantly Hungarian town in Ukraine’s Transcarpathia region.
Following a government handover meeting, Magyar later confirmed that his cabinet accepted the arrangement. He said the government itself would transfer the money directly to the designated foundation instead of paying it to the former ministers first.
The prime minister added that the government was also expecting state secretaries to declare whether they would waive their own payments or donate them to charitable causes.
On Friday evening, Magyar specifically addressed Orbán’s case in a Facebook post, stating that the former prime minister ‘will not receive’ the 38 million HUF payment. Referring to Orbán’s public asset declarations, Magyar sarcastically described his predecessor as ‘destitute’.
Orbán responded sharply on Saturday, rejecting accusations that his government had ‘looted’ the country. According to the former prime minister, the outgoing Fidesz administration had instead ‘lifted up’ Hungary by strengthening state assets and increasing the country’s financial reserves.
He further argued that the real danger of ‘looting the country’ had only emerged with the arrival of the new Tisza government.
Ironically, after returning to power in 2010, Fidesz launched its own campaign against what it called the ‘outrageous severance payments’ of the outgoing socialist–liberal governments, introducing a controversial 98 per cent special tax on large public-sector compensation packages.
The measure, aimed primarily at former MSZP-era officials and state executives, was repeatedly struck down by Hungary’s Constitutional Court because of its retroactive nature, only for the Orbán government to reintroduce a nearly identical version while simultaneously restricting the court’s authority over budgetary and tax matters.
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