Balázs Orbán, chairman of the board of trustees of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium Foundation, was met with harsh words by Tamás Novák, managing director of the college’s book publishing company founded in 2021. The MCC Press its leader in his long Facebook post among other things, he wrote about
“The future of MCC depends on the grace of Péter Magyar, we all know that, and you have done nothing in the last two months to improve the sense of security of the thousands of students and hundreds of your colleagues.”
Parliament on Monday voted for that amendment to the Basic Lawwhich prepares for the termination of public interest trust foundations (kekva) performing public duties. This is also the case with the MCC, which was founded thirty years ago and has been filled with a lot of public money in recent years, whose chairman of the board, Balázs Orbán, at the end of May in a shrill post came out against the amendment, in vain, a few days later Péter Magyar signaled in Brussels that may end by the end of summer the public-interest foundation that maintains a talent management institution close to Fidesz, stuffed with lots of state money and real estate under the Orbán governments. It was recently revealedthat the NER’s elite training course increased its assets by HUF 60.9 billion in the year before the election, and by 24 times since its establishment in 2011. The MCC previously wrote that if you do not know as a kekva, it would continue to operate as a simple foundation.
“Where do you bullshit about sovereignty, where do you bathe in the success of the students, to whom I congratulate from the bottom of my heart, but let’s add that they are successful MCCs not because you were part of the system, but in spite of it. I have written before that the deserved fall of Fidesz is not your responsibility in my opinion, but the fall of the MCC clearly is,” Novák wrote.
In his post, Novák wrote, “since April 13, every realistic person with a sense of meaning should have known that there is no such thing as someone who is loyal to you and to the MCC. From that moment on, you were not the engine, but the fuel on the ship that could have carried the MCC into an understandable future. You thought that if you put the students and teachers before you, then you don’t have to say anything about your own responsibility? If you had leadership qualities and your sense of responsibility, you would have run the whole question through a three-step logical chain already on the night of the elections:
- Does MCC have a strong enough legal footing to fight for it?
- If it is not that strong, can I/do I want to negotiate with the government to get the most out of the situation for students and employees?
- If I can’t/don’t want to negotiate, I’ll resign.”
Novak is MOME resignation of its entire board of trustees citing his example, he wrote, “you didn’t do it that way, but rather you preserved yourself”.
According to the head of MCC Press, in face-to-face conversations, everyone talks about Balázs Orbán’s responsibility, “but unfortunately no one feels the strength to confront him in their own area.”
Novák then wrote that while the competing book publishers and the founders of Libri, who left Libri, can be happy, “The Libris are struggling blindly, the others are moderately optimistic, especially that Zoltán Tarr threw your book law.”
The Libri-Bookline group is one of the biggest players in the Hungarian book market, they were present as market leaders in the entire vertical, from book distribution to book publishing to the store network. The MCC in 2020 acquired a minority share in Libri – then it seemedbooks on gender issues by MCC Press and the Fundamental Rights Center have proliferated in several Libri stores in Budapest. Two years later, MCC He became the owner of 98 percent of the country’s largest bookstore chain. About how MCC became the majority owner of Libri and what this means for domestic book publishing, we wrote more in this article. How the NER took the book market hostage this May presented in detail in this article. At the end of May, several senior managers and operational managers left Libri.
The draft law on the “fixed price of books”. Released in March 2024essentially regulated the price at which a book can be sold in Hungary for one year after its publication. The decree limited the possibilities of smaller publishers to engage in price competition with the wholesaler, so in the short term it favored the largest dealer networks, Libri and Líra. The largest book organization after the election called for the law to be repealed.
According to Novák, Orbán also painted “the political crosshairs” by saying that In early 2025 brought the Mandiner under the MCC, which continues to hit the Tisza, “you also hit, you didn’t resign, but you still expect the Tisza to be generous with the MCC?”
“You are leaving behind ruins, Balázs! The coat was big for you, so you filled it with arrogance, because you think everything is just a matter of money and will. You thought you could own the country’s biggest cultural enterprise as a member of a government that is at war with the intelligentsia,” Novák wrote to Orbán.
“This is your legacy, Balázs: the books law that was abolished in one fell swoop, Libri that lost its commercial value, the dying Scruton and Mandiner, the battered MCC prestige, the many, many people who let you down. You only had ideas, not plans and morals, so you didn’t create anything lasting,” Novák wrote.
We contacted Balázs Orbán regarding the statements of Tamás Novák, and we will report on it as soon as we receive an answer.
