The decline of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium is not just a matter of money

The languid sunset, casting crimson sparks across the Danube, stands in stark contrast to a more sombre administrative twilight in the greyness of Brussels. This is not a page from a Stefan Zweig novel, but rather the final act of the Belgian branch of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, a Hungarian private educational institution that in recent years has transformed into a think tank closely aligned with Orbán’s ideology and post-liberal principles. The Brussels office, founded in 2022 to monitor EU policies – and already banned by the EU in June 2026 on grounds of a lack of transparency – and headed by sociologist Frank Füredi, is failing to pay its staff’s salaries, effectively paralysing all institutional and cultural activities. This was revealed by Füredi himself, as he announced his resignation and spoke, according to Politico, of contractual obligations that had been irreversibly breached by the employer. The employer is the parent organisation based in Budapest.

Mathias Corvinus has had a curious history: it is an institution founded way back in 1996 by a group of private investors with the aim of fostering a cultural elite and professional excellence capable of leading Hungary into the heart of modernity. It bears a symbolically powerful name, that of one of the most beloved rulers in Hungarian history, Matthias the Just, a king who would often disguise himself as a wayfarer to listen, unrecognised, to the opinions and sentiments of the people. Since 2020, however, the institute—led by Balázs Orbán (no relation to former Prime Minister Viktor) and directed by Zoltán Szalai—has drawn so closely to the former government that it has ultimately become an ambitious part of it: a centre for the dissemination of post-liberal culture across Europe, a focal point and hub for intellectuals, thinkers, economists and political scientists of a national-conservative persuasion, modelled on the American movements championed by Yoram Hazony or Patrick J. Deneen. In recent years, the institute has therefore contributed – with its 7,000 students, its facilities and, above all, the substantial funding guaranteed by Viktor Orbán’s government – to becoming the European centre of a post-liberal international movement, with strong ties to the new wave of radical American conservatism. It is no coincidence that the inaugural edition of the main American conservative convention, CPAC, took place on European soil – specifically in Hungary – in 2022, with organisational support from the Mathias Corvinus College. Again in 2025, speaking from the CPAC stage—shared with Peter Thiel, who, however, does not seem to be tearing his hair out over the institute’s setbacks—the outgoing prime minister had said he wanted to take Brussels by storm as well, using the institute itself as a lever. However, the outcome was different. Defeated in the elections by Péter Magyar—who also stated his intention to investigate the funds allocated by his predecessor to the College—Orbán was no longer able to exert influence as the liaison officer for the post-liberal sphere.

And now that funding is drying up, the ambitions of Mathias Corvinum are dwindling. But it would be unfair to assume that its crisis is merely a matter of money. Indeed, there is no doubt that the great battle between factions on the right – which we are also witnessing in the United States – was being replayed on European soil, in the absence of any proposal for an organic and coherent ‘fusionism’, modelled on what Frank S. Meyer theorised decades ago. The favourite pastime of post-liberals, in fact, seems to be taking potshots at right-wing libertarians and the tech world. This happens when your ideological horizon is that of the ‘common good’ and when, precisely for this reason, you start bringing former Marxists on board – though it is unclear just how ‘former’ they really are. Frank Füredi himself has a background in Trotskyism, which he professed in the 1970s and 1980s, before moving towards communitarian sovereignty. Recently dismissed as a ‘red-brown’, he was in fact still enthusiastically embraced by the left until not so long ago: in 2020, Christian Raimo described Füredi’s essay ‘The New Conformism’ as a ‘very interesting text’, praising its analysis. The fact is that the institute’s ideological framework has condemned it to self-referentiality, with a communitarianism often tainted by national-communism, rendering it incapable of finding common ground with other strands of the right and thus able to survive only artificially thanks to state funding.