High Foreign Worker Permit Requests at BYD in Hungary Raises Eyebrows
- 23 Jul 2026 10:12 AM
BYD and its subcontractors have requested and received group work permits for almost as many third-country nationals as the number of jobs they promised to create at their Szeged investment, the parliamentary state secretary of the foreign ministry, Gyorgy Laszlo Velkey, wrote in a post on Facebook.
Velkey said that after signing with BYD, Peter Szijjarto, the former foreign affairs and trade minister, had quickly sought to clarify that in his new role he would be responsible exclusively for the international relations of the Chinese multinational and would have nothing to do with the company's investments in Hungary.
"Could it be because he does not want to work with guest workers here?" Velkey asked.
He said Szijjarto knew full well that BYD and its subcontractors had requested and received group work permits from the Hungarian authorities for almost as many third-country nationals as the number of jobs they had promised to create at the Szeged investment.
"And we are talking about tens of thousands of jobs," he added.
This meant that the Orban government, which had "scared people with migrants" for years, had not planned to fill the future BYD jobs with Hungarian workers, but with third-country nationals, the parliamentary state secretary said.
Yet the "disgraced former prime minister" had said just a few years ago that "we have never invited anyone here, neither as guest workers nor for any other reason, to live with us," Velkey said.
He noted that government audits so far had shown that this "lie", too, had collapsed.
"So much for the disgraced government's famous sovereignty protection battles," Velkey said.
He said that on the government side, Szijjarto had negotiated and signed the investment agreement with BYD, and ministry documents showed clearly that during the negotiations Szijjarto had worked to provide BYD with all necessary assistance.
Thus, he himself had promoted the granting of economically prioritised status and the expedited processing of visa applications for Chinese workers, Velkey added.
Photo: AutoWallis
Source: MTI – Hungary’s national news agency since 1881.
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