Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC)

Background

The Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) is a think tank based in Budapest. It is Hungary’s largest private educational institution. It is closely affiliated with Viktor Orbán’s government and is funded by the proceeds of the country’s oil and gas company.

MCC has been chaired by Orbán’s political director Balász Orbán (no relation) since 2020.¹ It was founded in 1996 by businessman Andras Tombor, who was Viktor Orbán’s security policy advisor during his first government (1998–2002), and has since worked as a lobbyist close to Orbán’s national-conservative party Fidesz.²

In November 2022, MCC launched MCC Brussels, a think tank designed “to shake up the discussion on the big issues that face the continent,”³ and challenge Hungary’s “toxic reputation” in Europe.⁴ MCC Brussels’ executive director Frank Füredi has attacked climate change advocacy, and has argued that the “green agenda” is being deliberately “exploited and weaponised” by environmental campaign groups.⁵ Füredi is closely affiliated with the online magazine Spiked, which regularly publishes articles attacking climate science or policy measures.

Both MCC and MCC Brussels have promoted climate science deniers through their events, bringing together anti-climate organisations such as the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute. MCC’s website lists prominent anti-climate figures Björn Lomborg, Toby Young, Jordan Peterson, Michael Shellenberger, and Tucker Carlson as guest speakers.⁶

MCC has published reports opposing environmental action in Europe. MCC Brussels stated that one of its key campaigning objectives in 2024 was to help create “a Europe unshackled from environmentalism.”⁷ MCC Brussels gathered radical farmers groups ahead of the 2024 European elections and attempted to coordinate farmers’ protests against EU climate legislation.⁸

MCC Press, the think tank’s in-house publishing division, published the Hungarian edition of Michael Shellenberger’s book “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All,”⁹ hosting a launch event where he was invited to speak.¹⁰

In 2022, MCC held at least €1.1 billion in assets,¹¹ following Fidesz’s decision two years earlier to give it a 10 percent stake in the Hungarian national oil company MOL,¹² which refines and sells imported Russian oil and gas.¹³ The think tank was also handed a 10 percent stake in the pharmaceutical firm Gedeon Richter, plus $462 million in cash, and $9 million in property. Through Gedeon Richter and MOL, the think tank was given shares in two of the country’s three most valuable companies.

When asked by DeSmog about the funding sources of MCC Brussels, Furedi said that he maintained “complete independence” over its output and agenda.¹⁴

He added that he would be “prepared to take money from the devil, because I think I’ve got enough integrity, that you know, I’m not going to play to their tune.”

MCC has been campaigning against NGOs receiving funding from government bodies,¹⁵ in particular the EU, despite its own Hungarian state funding.

MCC has been called “a powerful tool for far-right propaganda” by a former MCC fellow.¹⁶ One former student reported in The Guardian that there is an expectation they will go on to “propagate Orbán’s positions to an audience in their home nations”, and in some cases, graduates “were offered lucrative positions at MCC-affiliated institutions”. Balázs Orbán has written on X: “It is our goal for Hungary to become an intellectual powerhouse, in which MCC plays a key role.”¹⁷

MCC Brussels co-sponsored the National Conservatism Brussels conference in May 2024,¹⁸ which platformed a number of anti-climate figures including Nigel Farage and Frank Füredi.¹⁹

In March 2025 at a gathering organised by the Heritage Foundation, MCC Brussels along with the Polish think tank Ordo Iuris presented a paper that proposed dismantling the European Commission and the European Court of Justice.²⁰

MCC has opened up educational centres and partnered with universities across Europe. It has opened 30 regional centres, according to a report published by Challenges.fr in November 2024.²¹ The think tank has also partnered with a private Berlin business school, ESMT.²² In 2023, MCC acquired Modul University in Vienna.²³

A report from The Ferret found that MCC had been employing Scottish academics as fellows, many of whom had advocated on behalf of the think tank’s positions.²⁴

Stance on Climate Change

February 26, 2025

In a post on X, MCC Brussels argued that Europe should “ditch the net zero madness”.²⁵

February 18, 2025

MCC Brussels organised an event featuring multiple panels titled “Re-energise: economic growth beyond the Green Deal,” which suggested that net zero and European energy security are in competition, asking the question on one panel: “why are European elites so wedded to the ideology of net zero?”²⁶

Roman Haider, an Austrian MP from the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) was invited to speak on a panel about the alleged failures of the EU’s Green Deal climate policy package. Haider previously worked with the American climate denial think tank the Heartland Institute to oppose EU climate legislation.²⁷

June 7, 2024

In the middle of the 2024 EU elections, MCC Brussels posted on X as part of a thread:²⁸

“A runaway environmental agenda is strangling Europe’s economy and Europe’s farmers and causing a cost-of-living crisis. Farmers and farming communities have been at the forefront of the fightback against the dangerous obsession with Net Zero.”

May 23, 2024

MCC Brussels hosted an event in Brussels titled “Climate Change: Beyond the consensus,” inviting climate denying scientist Richard Lindzen to give a keynote speech during which he questioned the extent to which there is a scientific basis to the climate movement.²⁹

MCC also invited Samual Furfari, an advisor to the UK-based climate denial think tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and Professor Anthony O’Hear, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Buckingham, to the panel discussion.³⁰

In his speech, Lindzen played down the potential impact of unabated climate change:

“People live in the Arctic, people live on the Equator. We’ve been able to manage radically different situations and that’s forgotten. When you talk about 1.5C being the change, you’re not exactly talking about a change from the poles to the tropics.”

He continued by claiming that net zero policies are too costly to implement:

“Climate policies would impoverish the working middle class, condemn billions of the world’s poorest to increased poverty, leave our children despairing, and enrich our enemies who will enjoy our demise.”

Anthony O’Hear referred to “so-called climate science” and claimed it was based on “rather questionable” modelling. He added that the state of scientific knowledge on climate change is “far more uncertain than is made out.”

O’Hear is a professor with the University of Buckingham, a private university which has links to libertarian groups that advocate against state-led climate action, including the Institute of Economic Affairs, a UK think tank that was funded by the oil major BP for at least 50 years.

The conference was held in partnership with the Climate Policy Institute (“Klímapolitikai Intézet” in Hungarian), which was founded by MCC,³¹ and has been accused of pushing “skepticism around green energy policies” by The Nation.³²

November 27, 2023

MCC Brussels published a report titled “The Silent War on Farming: How EU policies are destroying our agriculture,” written by MCC Brussels fellow Richard J. Schenk, which accused the bloc of an “environmental crusade”.³³

Funding

In 2020, Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party gave MCC a 10 percent stake in MOL, the Hungarian national oil company, and the national pharma firm Gedeon Richter, with a combined value of $1.3 billion – over 1 percent of the value of the Hungarian economy – plus $462 million in cash and $9 million in property.³⁴

Since 2022, MOL’s money has been largely made through selling imported Russian oil to other European countries, according to the German investigative outlet CORRECTIV.³⁵

In 2022, MCC declared it held €1.1 billion in assets, and had an operating budget of €90 million.³⁶

The Guardian reported that the value of MCC’s assets in 2021 was higher than Hungary’s entire education budget for the year.³⁷

Affiliations

Fidesz – MCC received its funding from the Hungarian government via the ruling party Fidesz, is chaired by Viktor Orbán’s political director Balász Orbán, while current and former Fidesz politicians have sat on the board.³⁸
The Heritage Foundation, U.S. – MCC has invited figures from the Heritage Foundation to speak at multiple events, including its president Kevin Roberts.³⁹ MCC has also sent student delegations to visit the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC.⁴⁰ The Heritage Foundation hosted a private summit to discuss a joint MCC and Ordo Iuris report in Washington DC in March 2025 titled “The Great Reset: Restoring Member State Sovereignty in the 21st Century.”⁴¹
The Cato Institute, U.S. – MCC organised a student visit to the Cato Institute as part of a U.S.-Hungary cultural exchange programme,⁴² invited a Cato Institute representative to speak at a series of talks in 2020,“Patriotic Talks,” MCC, accessed April 10, 2025. Archived November 23, 2020. Archive URL: https://archive.is/gWDN0 and granted a fellowship in 2021 to a lecturer who had worked for the institute.⁴³
Danube Institute, Hungary – MCC and the Danube Institute have jointly organised Conservative conferences and lectures, including both sponsoring the National Conservatism Brussels conferences in 2024,⁴⁴ and 2022.⁴⁵
Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS), Germany – MCC has organised events and exchange programmes with KAS, the state-funded political think tank affiliated with Germany’s Conservative Democratic Union (CDU) party. They have jointly organised book launches,⁴⁶ conference days,⁴⁷ and study exchange programmes. The director of MCC’s German-Hungarian Institute, Bence Bauer, worked as a project coordinator at the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung until 2020.⁴⁸
Ordo Iuris, Poland – a Polish Christian nationalist think tank. MCC and Ordo Iuris co-published a report calling for the European Commission and European Court of Justice to be dissolved.⁴⁹ MCC has also invited Ordo Iuris’ president, Jerzy Kwaśniewski, to speak at events.⁵⁰
National Conservatism – MCC has co-sponsored at least two National Conservatism conferences in Brussels, both of which brought to the stage prominent climate deniers.⁵¹
Center For Fundamental Rights, Hungary – MCC has organised events with the Center for Fundamental Rights, the organising force behind CPAC Hungary, including a U.S. election watch party.⁵²
Centre of University Studies (CEU), Spain – a private Catholic university that has hosted MCC events in Spain, and which has sent members of its staff to attend MCC events outside of Spain.⁵³
Centro Studi Machiavelli, Italy – the Italian far-right Lega party’s think tank which hosted a joint event in May 2024 with MCC.⁵⁴

Key People

Balázs Orbán – chairman of the board of advisors, and Viktor Orbán’s political director (no relation).⁵⁵
Frank Füredi – executive director of MCC Brussels, and frequent author at Spiked. He is also a registered lobbyist for MCC Brussels in the European Parliament.⁵⁶ Füredi is an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent.⁵⁷ He is also listed as a “visiting fellow” on MCC’s main site.⁵⁸
Jacob Reynolds – head of policy of MCC Brussels. He is a regular podcast guest and writer at Spiked and an associate fellow at the “free speech” organisation Academy of Ideas, which jointly organises the “Battle of Ideas” festival,⁵⁹ along with other right-wing, anti-climate groups He has written a book,⁶⁰ “Beyond the Culture Wars”, about “how Western societies have become estranged from the basic building blocks of political life”.⁶¹

Educational Ventures

Research Institutes

MCC operates at least six in-house research institutes:⁶²

Institute for Hungarian Unity
Youth Research Institute
Climate Policy Institute
Migration Research Institute
Learning Institute
German-Hungarian Institute

MCC Feszt

Every year, MCC hosts a festival, MCC Feszt, which features talks and lectures from pro-Orbán officials and far-right cultural figures from around the world. Past festivals have featured former Fox News talk show host Tucker Carlson,⁶³ Daily Wire talk show host Michael Knowles,⁶⁴ and PragerU founder Dennis Prager.⁶⁵

Educational centers and partnerships

MCC owns two campuses in Budapest, a further 16 across the rest of Hungary, and another 13 in Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia, and Belgium.⁶⁶

MCC has partnered with a number of universities around the world, offers exchanges and scholarships with the following universities:

In 2023, MCC purchased Modul University, a private institution based in Vienna, Austria.⁶⁹

Key Actions

February 21, 2025

MCC Brussels was accused of breaching the EU’s corporate lobbying rules for failing to disclose any financial information on the grounds of being a “newly formed entity”, despite being active in the EU since November 2022.⁷⁰ This is despite MCC’s repeated calls⁷¹ for increased scrutiny of NGO funding in the EU.⁷²

An MCC spokesperson said in response that the group had been “open about its intents and purposes since we set foot in the city” and that it has “complied with all the relevant requirements of the transparency register.”

February 8, 2025

Following Elon Musk’s cull of workers across the U.S. federal government through his Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”), MCC Brussels published a press release calling “for establishment of EU DOGE” to cut funding for NGOs in the EU.⁷³

December 6, 2024

MCC Brussels sponsored an event in Berlin called “The Transatlantic Partnership” along with the Danube Institute, organised by the German think tank The Republic, a member of the Atlas Network,⁷⁴ as a report from CORRECTIV in Germany revealed.⁷⁵ Both Frank Füredi and Balázs Orbán of MCC spoke at the event.

April 9, 2024

Ahead of the EU elections in June 2024, MCC brought together a number of right-wing protest groups from across Europe in Brussels for a “lunch and discussion,” many of which were helping to organise a farmers’ protest in Brussels on 4 June.⁷⁶

The assembled groups included the radical activist Dutch Farmers Defence Force (FDF), which has been involved in farmers’ protests that have blocked roads in the Netherlands.

At the meeting, Sieta van Keimpema, a spokesperson for FDF, accused the EU Commission of “deliberately exterminating its own farmers and its own food production,” and told the audience that her movement would “take a broom and sweep them away from their Brussels homes, sweep them away from the 6th to the 9th [of June].”

January 10, 2024

In a press release titled “Six themes we’re fighting for to make Europe freer in 2024,” MCC Brussels stated that one of its key campaign issues for that year was to push for “a Europe unshackled from environmentalism.”⁷⁷

MCC argued that environmentalism would only reduce European living standards, saying:

“At the heart of all these attacks on our economy and productivity is the ideology of environmentalism: an ideology that says human beings are fundamentally destructive, polluting, essentially evil creatures, and that the only thing we can do short of disappearing from the planet is reducing our ‘carbon footprint’ to that of a 14th Century peasant.”

August 8, 2023

MCC was reported to have been considering opening up more regional centres across Europe, including plans for an educational centre in London.⁷⁸

June 13, 2023

MCC reportedly purchased Libri, Hungary’s largest publishing house and bookstore.⁷⁹

May 17, 2023

MCC Brussels published a report titled “Lights out: Is the EU failing on energy policy?,” written by Spiked columnist James Woudhuysen, who has consistently attacked climate science and policy throughout his columns, arguing in 2020 that scientific modelling “has never been less credible.”⁸⁰

In the report, Woudhuysen argued that while energy policy is of key importance to Europe’s prosperity it “is infected by politicised goals – such as the logic of environmentalism” which results in “a failure to secure the energy we need.”

May 12, 2023

MCC bought Modul University in Vienna, Austria, a private university with around 1,000 students.⁸¹ MCC offered “Mathias Corvinus Collegium Scholarships” at Modul in 2024 to 25 students from Eastern European, Balkan and Caucus countries.⁸²

April 5, 2023

MCC Brussels published an article on its website by Austrian political scientists Ralph Gert Schöllhammer, in which he argued that Europe’s pursuit of the green energy transition was “dogma,” calling on the bloc to double down on fossil fuel use and embrace “realism” over “an ideology that will ultimately be self-defeating.”⁸³

He argued that switching to renewable energy would move Europe away from energy independence and therefore hand “significant leverage to its geopolitical competitors.”

He made false claims about the maturity of renewable energy technologies, adding:

“Oil, coal and gas remain the world’s main sources of primary energy, accounting for over 80 percent of worldwide consumption, because the current level of technology simply does not offer feasible alternatives in the short to medium run. Contrary to what one might believe, energy transitions are slow moving, and speeding up the transition would only be possible through a massive reduction of available energy – which in turn, can only be achieved by a massive reduction in living standards.”

November 22, 2021

MCC in partnership with its Climate Policy Institute hosted American climate denier Michael Shellenberger to launch the Hungarian translation of his book “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All,” announced in a press release entitled “Environmentalism is the new religion.”⁸⁴

At the launch, MCC Director Balazs Orbán, said:

“Instead of a poison-green policy, we need a reasonable green policy. One that wishes to meet climate goals not by raising utility costs, by deregulating the price of electricity or natural gas, or by imposing a climate tax on housing or cars. A responsible green policy must benefit, not penalize, people and businesses. We need incentives rather than bans, local solutions rather than centralized dictates imposed on us globally.”

July 2, 2020

MCC announced the formation of its Climate Policy Institute in collaboration with the Századvég Foundation, stating in a press release that the institute will “not focus on juxtaposing scientific results, but will provide help for decision-makers, from the governmental to local governmental level, and provide credible information on climate change for the general public.”⁸⁵