Chinese car giant BYD has made a key senior management appointment, bringing in former Hungarian Foreign and Trade Minister Péter Szijjártó. Immediately after officially resigning from his parliamentary mandate, Budapest's former top diplomat takes over as head of foreign relations and new business development in the global structure of the concern.
This strategic horizontal transfer from the state apparatus to the private sector comes at a time when the world's largest manufacturer of new energy vehicles is preparing a large-scale expansion of its industrial presence on the Old Continent. As foreign minister, Szijjártó was among the main architects behind attracting Asian investment to Hungary and played a key role in negotiating the construction of BYD’s first European passenger car plant.
The megaproject in the southern Hungarian city of Szeged, worth more than 4 billion euros, is designed with an initial annual capacity of 200,000 vehicles and the potential to double production at a later stage. While initial estimates had the assembly lines rolling out the first series machines at the end of last year, the schedule has been optimized and assembly has been scheduled to start in the last quarter of 2026.
BYD’s entry into Europe through local production is a critical step in offsetting trade barriers and additional tariffs imposed by the European Union on imports of Chinese electric vehicles. Although the Szeged project has been subject to an investigation by the European Commission into the compatibility of state subsidies with competition rules, the company has reaffirmed its firm intention to make Hungary its central production and logistics hub on the continent. The addition of a political figure with extensive expertise in diplomatic circles in Brussels and Beijing demonstrates BYD's desire to adapt more smoothly to the European regulatory framework.