Hungarian Conservative

In the mid-2010s, the Hungarian defence industry was declared a key national economic area with the goal of providing Hungarian-made state-of-the-art defence equipment to the renewed Hungarian armed forces and make Hungary an arms exporter. Since then several major international companies have announced plans to bring their manufacturing and development capacity to the country.

Rheinmetall is one of the few companies of its type with a proven track record of successful localisation projects. But that is only part of the story. Equally important was the trust that was built between the German corporation and the Hungarian government during the process of expanding cooperation.

‘As a volunteer reserve captain, I have seen the internal state of the armed forces from the bottom up, and as a minister, from the top down. From both perspectives, it is clear that a profound organisational culture change is needed,’ Defence Minister Szalay-Bobrovniczky noted in a recent interview.