BYD has appointed Peter Szijjarto, Hungary’s foreign and trade minister since 2014, to an executive role handling the group’s external relations and expansion into new business lines. Szijjarto, 47, is giving up his seat in Hungary’s National Assembly, which he has held since 2002, to take the job.
The move follows years of Szijjarto personally courting Chinese investment into Hungary, including the strategic cooperation agreement between the Hungarian government and BYD. The automaker broke ground on its first European passenger-car plant in Szeged in 2024, a 300,000-unit facility, and has also set up a European headquarters and R&D center in Budapest.
The appointment has drawn criticism as a “revolving door” case: a politician who spent years attracting Chinese subsidies and projects into the country is now on the payroll of one of the companies he helped bring in. Hungary’s new government and Szijjarto’s political opponents have accused him of a conflict of interest, according to AP News.
For BYD, the hire is less about optics than access. The company is expanding fast across Europe while navigating EU tariffs on Chinese-built EVs, regulatory scrutiny and political pushback in several markets. A former foreign minister with a decade of EU-China negotiating experience gives BYD a direct line into Brussels and national governments as the Szeged plant ramps up and the fight for European market share intensifies.
