• Trump’s Return and European Security: How prepared is Europe for another Trump presidency?
• Hungary’s Role in the EU: Orbán’s strategy of balancing economic dependence on Europe while forging alliances with China and Russia.
• The Future of Illiberalism: Why are authoritarian-leaning leaders gaining ground in Europe?
• Opposition in Hungary: Can Péter Magyar’s movement challenge Orbán in the 2026 elections?
• The Rise of the Far Right: How European democracies are struggling to counteract populist narratives.
• Workforce & Migration Contradictions: How Hungary recruits foreign labor while maintaining anti-immigration rhetoric.
• The Future of Democracy in Europe: Szelényi’s perspective on the resilience of democratic movements.

Zsuzsanna Szelényi is a Hungarian politician, democracy expert, and director of the CEU Democracy Institute Leadership Academy. She was a founding member of Fidesz but later distanced herself from Viktor Orbán’s politics. She worked for the Council of Europe for 15 years, advising governments on conflict resolution and democratic governance. In 2014, she returned to Hungarian politics as an opposition MP. Her book, Tainted Democracy (2022), examines Orbán’s consolidation of power and the erosion of democratic institutions in Hungary. Szelényi was also a 2018/19 Europe's Futures Fellow of the IWM and ERSTE Foundation.

Find Szelényi on X @zszelenyi or on her personal website at https://www.zsuzsannaszelenyi.com/.

Her book Tainted Democracy is on sale here and from reputable retailers.
 

Ivan Vejvoda  is Head of the Europe's Futures program at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM Vienna) implemented in partnership with ERSTE Foundation. The program is dedicated to the cultivation of knowledge and the generation of ideas addressing pivotal challenges confronting Europe and the European Union: nexus of borders and migration, deterioration in rule of law and democracy and European Union’s enlargement prospects.

The Institute for Human Sciences is an institute of advanced studies in the humanities and social sciences. Founded as a place of encounter in 1982 by a young Polish philosopher, Krzysztof Michalski, and two German colleagues in neutral Austria, its initial mission was to create a meeting place for dissenting thinkers of Eastern Europe and prominent scholars from the West.

Since then it has promoted intellectual exchange across disciplines, between academia and society, and among regions that now embrace the Global South and North. The IWM is an independent and non-partisan institution, and proudly so. All of our fellows, visiting and permanent, pursue their own research in an environment designed to enrich their work and to render it more accessible within and beyond academia.

For further information about the Institute:

https://www.iwm.at/