BYD has hired Péter Szijjártó, Hungary’s foreign minister for the past twelve years, as a senior executive to oversee external relations for the group and the development of new business lines.
The recruitment brings on the leading political champion of the company’s investment in the country, just as the Chinese giant works to steady its troubled European factory.
Szijjártó, said on Wednesday he had resigned his parliamentary seat to take up the role, describing it as an international position at one of the defining companies of the world economy.
The remit places one of Europe’s most China-friendly politicians at the center of BYD‘s push to be seen as a local manufacturer on the continent.
From Minister to Executive
The move takes Szijjártó from the top of Hungary’s foreign policy into the corporate world in a single step.
He served as foreign affairs and trade minister from 2014 until 2026, when the opposition Tisza Party won a two-thirds parliamentary majority and ended the long-governing coalition under which he had held office.
BYD Hungary told the state news agency MTI that Szijjártó will occupy a global, international position and will not be part of the company’s Hungarian management, distancing the role from the domestic operations he had championed in government.
As minister, he announced BYD‘s decision to build its first European car plant in Szeged in December 2023, calling it one of the most important industrial investments in Hungary’s history and a product of the government’s policy of opening to the East.
His appointment drew immediate political criticism at home, with figures from the new governing party questioning whose interests he had served in office, though such reactions reflect the charged domestic backdrop rather than any statement from the company.
A Factory Behind Schedule
Szijjártó joins as the Szeged plant, the centerpiece of that legacy, works through a series of delays.
The roughly €4 billion factory, BYD‘s first passenger-vehicle plant in the European Union, began trial production in late January after missing an original target of starting operations by the end of 2025.
Executive VP Stella Li has since confirmed that full vehicle assembly is now expected only in the fourth quarter of 2026, roughly a year behind the original schedule.
The plant is designed for an eventual annual capacity of up to 300,000 vehicles, though the company has signaled it will run well below that level for at least its first two years, building only a fraction of that number in 2026.
The first model off the line is set to be the Dolphin Surf, the compact car sold as the Seagull in China, with the Europe-focused Dolphin G and other models to follow.
Troubles at the Site
The delays are only part of the difficulty that has surrounded the project.
The construction site has been the subject of labor scrutiny, including a worker’s death that was the second at the site this year.
A China Labor Watch report has separately alleged seven-day weeks and long shifts for migrant workers hired through subcontractors.
Hungarian authorities have also examined claims that contaminated soil was moved from the site to nearby farmland, which the company has denied, and the European Union has investigated whether the plant received unlawful Chinese subsidies.
BYD has rejected the various allegations, with Li calling the environmental claim false and saying the company had engaged lawyers to respond, while maintaining that it remains committed to the Hungarian project.
Against that backdrop, hiring a politician with deep government contacts carries a clear logic for the company.
Szijjártó brings a decade of experience managing Hungary’s external relations to a manufacturer that has struggled to recruit senior executives and dealers with local market knowledge as it expands across Europe.
The Wider European Push
The Szeged plant sits at the heart of a broader localization drive that Szijjártó’s role is meant to support.
BYD has moved its European headquarters to Budapest, launched a plug-in hybrid built specifically for European buyers and set out plans for a fast-charging network across the continent, part of a strategy to be perceived as a European carmaker rather than an importer.
The company is searching for a second European factory, with Spain and Portugal among the locations under consideration, and has held talks with Stellantis and others about taking over underused plants rather than building new ones.
That preference has a ready supply, as major European carmakers including Volkswagen and Stellantis grapple with production overcapacity and have signaled a willingness to sell sites or partner with Chinese manufacturers.
Work on a planned plant in Turkey has meanwhile been paused while the company concentrates on European output, leaving Szeged as the near-term focus of its manufacturing ambitions on the continent.
Local production lets BYD avoid the European Commission’s countervailing duties on Chinese-built electric vehicles, a 17% charge layered on top of the standard 10% car-import tariff since late 2024.
The stakes are rising as the company’s European sales climb, with registrations up about 135% year-on-year in May across seventeen markets even before local output begins.
BYD has been in Hungary since 2016, when it opened an electric-bus plant, and the country has become the base for its European headquarters and a research centre alongside the Szeged factory.
That tariff pressure, and the prospect of similar duties on plug-in hybrids, has made a credible European manufacturing presence central to the company’s plans, and given added weight to a hire aimed at managing its relationships across the region.
