The East Wind: Who Really Owns Hungary's Battery Plants

Chinese billions and the Hungarian economy's new goldmine

Hungary did not become the epicentre of European battery manufacturing by accident. Since 2016, the government has deliberately set about turning the country into a destination for the world's biggest battery makers. The recipe was simple: cheap land, tax breaks, fast-track permitting and the promise that, here, everyone plays along. The result: five giant investments, several trillion Hungarian forints (HUF) of public money, and a country whose economy now leans heavily on batteries.

But who ends up paying for it? And who profits?

The big five

Samsung SDI, Göd. Since 2016, the South Korean giant has put a total of 2,885 billion forints (≈€8 billion, at roughly 360 forints to the euro) into its plant at Göd, a town on the Danube just north of Budapest. The site is now the company's European flagship. The state has so far paid out more than 320 billion forints in individually negotiated aid to the site — 133 billion of that in 2025, at a time when the company was shedding several hundred jobs, and on some estimates more than a thousand. At its peak, the plant employed close to 8,000 people, but the headcount has fallen sharply since. Under its contract with the government, the company must maintain a baseline workforce of 3,308 until 2038 and pay out 668 billion forints in wages — that was what secured it the latest aid package.

CATL, Debrecen. The world's largest battery maker is pumping 2,700–3,000 billion forints into its plant in Debrecen, Hungary's second city, which will be the largest battery factory in Europe. The state's contribution can be put at 600–800 billion forints: individually negotiated subsidies, road upgrades, rail connections, water and power supply. The plant is already running: modules have been assembled in a rented building since August 2024, and cell production starts in the first half of 2026. The headcount is around 600, though the plan is for it to grow into the thousands. In the summer of 2025, however, 150–200 Hungarian workers were let go and replaced by workers brought in from China. The question is: whose factory will it be in the end?

BYD, Szeged. The world's second-largest battery maker and largest manufacturer of electric cars is building a $4.5 billion car plant outside Szeged, in southern Hungary near the Serbian border. This is not a battery plant — at least not yet — but a passenger-car assembly plant. The state support package is vast: the infrastructure alone costs 550 billion forints (an industrial park, a railway bridge, road upgrades), and the government has also provided a 400-billion-forint credit line for railway development. The project is running late; while the workforce is still being trained, the plant is putting together semi-knocked-down (SKD) kits shipped from China — vehicles that arrive part-built and in pieces. The question is: when will the first Szeged-built BYD roll off the line?

EVE Energy, Debrecen. The fourth Asian giant has announced an investment of 400 billion forints, although the company's own figure puts it closer to $1.4 billion (482 billion forints). The state subsidy is a mere 14 billion forints — the lowest of the four giants. EVE came at BMW's request: it will build batteries here for the Munich carmaker. The plant is still under construction, but once it is finished, an entire battery ecosystem could grow up around Debrecen.

SK On, Iváncsa and Komárom. South Korea's SK On — Samsung SDI's rival in the contest for the European battery market — is undertaking the largest greenfield investment in modern Hungarian economic history to date at Iváncsa, in the centre of the country: a 681-billion-forint site with 30 GWh of capacity, among the most imposing battery plants in Europe. The company also has two plants running at Komárom, in the north-west. In the spring of 2024, a major scandal broke at the Iváncsa site: more than a thousand guest workers — mostly Kyrgyz — were dismissed summarily and without severance pay. Further rounds of redundancies followed in 2025 and 2026, blamed on weakening European demand for electric cars. The friction between Hungarian and guest workers at SK On has been at least as sharp as at CATL.

Who works in the factories?

The grand promise was always the same: tens of thousands of jobs, highly qualified Hungarian engineers, happy families. The reality is more nuanced. At Samsung's Göd plant, close to 8,000 people were employed at the peak, but that number has shrunk considerably since. CATL currently has 600 staff, and the expansion has yet to materialise. At BYD's car plant, the headcount is not yet known.

The real problem, though, is not the numbers but the nationality mix. In the summer of 2025, CATL dismissed 150–200 Hungarian workers, and workers brought in from China took their place. The company's explanation: Hungarian employees could not keep up with the Chinese pace. Its critics' version: Chinese labour is cheaper, and it lets the company import its corporate culture along with it. The Fidesz government, in office until 2026, did not push back hard on this — and one of the first announcements made by the Tisza government, which took power in the spring of 2026, was precisely that: tighter checks on the proportion of Chinese workers.

Water and chemicals

A battery plant consumes a staggering amount of water. CATL's Debrecen site currently uses 22,000 cubic metres a day, rising to 33,000 after the expansion — 82% of the entire daily water consumption of the city of Debrecen. Samsung's projected requirement at Göd is 20,000 cubic metres a day, equivalent to the total consumption of a mid-sized Hungarian city.

Quantity is not the only problem. N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP), the solvent used in production, is a toxic substance: under EU classification it is a reproductive toxicant, hazardous to the unborn child. In 2022, it was detected even in the wells at Göd, and 80 tonnes a year were being released into the air. According to Greenpeace's nationwide survey in March 2026, statutory limits are no longer being breached — but locals are sceptical. The question is: if the plants expand, will the pollution grow with them?

The bill

Add up the state subsidies, the infrastructure works and the hidden costs, and more than 1,500 billion forints (≈€4.2 billion) of public money has gone on the four Chinese and Korean mega-projects alone (SK On's plants at Iváncsa and Komárom push the figure higher still). That is more than Hungary's entire culture budget. The question any investigative reporter would ask: if that money had gone instead on Hungarian small and medium-sized businesses, on education or on healthcare, where would the country be today?

The problem runs deeper. When the state picks the winners, the decisions turn on political preference rather than market efficiency. Taxpayers carry the risk; the multinationals collect the return. Political decision-making, not market competition, becomes the main mechanism for allocating resources — and in that system the losers are always the ones with no lobbyist inside the government.

The Tisza government means to overturn that logic: its programme includes setting up a national battery-industry inspectorate, a review of polluting large-scale investments, and stricter checks on the proportion of Chinese workers. But the plants are already going up, the contracts are signed, the money is spent. The question is: what can still be changed without Hungary losing the confidence of investors?

When a government decides to build an industry out of taxpayers' money, it is not only making an economic decision but placing a political bet. The Fidesz government's wager was that lithium would be the new oil and Hungary the new Saudi Arabia. If it was wrong, the country will be paying for it for decades.

— The Danube Lens