Hungary's Battery Bet and Europe's Green Transition – Weiler Vilmos

Does the European Union have an ‘intelligent’ green strategy that is failing in practice while Hungary pursues a ‘dumb’ one that seems to work?

In this episode of the Visegrad Insight Podcast, Wojciech Przybylski speaks with Hungarian journalist Vilmos Weiler about the surge of Chinese and Korean battery investments in Hungary and what this means for European competitiveness, economic security and environmental safety.

This podcast is a part of our Europe Future Forum Polish-Hungarian Perspectives project. Through a programme of meetings with experts, political advisers and opinion leaders from both countries, we aim to explore Poland’s and Hungary’s perspectives on the transformations underway in the European Union at the threshold of an age of economic warfare. Supported by the Wacław Felczak Institute for Polish-Hungarian Cooperation.

00:00 – Welcome and the provocation
‘Is Europe smart but ineffective, and Hungary dumb but successful?’

02:40 – Europe bans engines, forgets batteries
Why the green transition started without a battery strategy

05:55 – How Hungary became Europe’s battery hub
Korean pioneers, Chinese follow-ups and the collapse of European hopes

08:10 – Big factories, small gains
Automation, imported labour and the missing research and development

11:05 – ‘Battery factories are poisonous’
Pollution scandals, public anger and why Samsung changed everything

14:00 – Regulation without enforcement
Permits revoked, production continuing and the limits of state control

16:45 – Are Chinese batteries really ‘European’?
Local content rules, tariffs and regulatory fog in Brussels

19:55 – Votes, jobs and the middle class myth
Why car factories still win elections and batteries do not

23:20 – The uneasy compromise
Why Hungary loves car plants but fears battery gigafactories

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5rS9...