Frank Furedi has resigned with immediate effect as executive director of MCC Brussels after reporting that the organization has stopped receiving the funds necessary to pay its staff and maintain its activities.
In a letter sent on Monday to the board of Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), Furedi attributed his departure to a “severe cause attributable exclusively to the employer” and said contractual obligations had been “irreversibly” breached by the persistent failure to provide the agreed funding.
The financial crisis is directly affecting staff. According to Furedi, employees have gone unpaid, while MCC Brussels no longer has sufficient resources to meet its commitments to suppliers or carry out planned projects. The Italian news agency ANSA reported that the outgoing director described the situation as effectively paralysing the institution’s activities.
The Guardian also reported that employees at the Brussels office had not received their salaries for July and August.
The problems are not confined to MCC Brussels. The European Conservative is also affected by the funding crisis, with the publication’s entire staff currently unpaid.
That makes the situation broader than a financial dispute affecting a single Brussels think tank. Two of the most visible conservative projects connected to the institutional network built around MCC are now facing direct consequences from the interruption of funding from Hungary.
The crisis is closely connected to the political change in Budapest.
MCC Brussels was established in 2022 as the European arm of Mathias Corvinus Collegium, an educational and intellectual institution that expanded substantially during Viktor Orbán’s governments.
The European Conservative developed alongside it as another important part of the same conservative intellectual ecosystem. The English-language publication has expanded its presence in both Brussels and Budapest and is published by European Conservative Nonprofit Kft., whose ownership sits within the wider MCC corporate structure.
The two organizations perform different functions, but their political and intellectual purpose has been closely aligned: to create a permanent conservative and sovereigntist presence capable of contesting the ideas that dominate the institutions, think tanks, and policy networks surrounding the European Union.
MCC Brussels focused particularly on research, public events, and policy debates. The European Conservative provided a media platform for news, commentary, and longer-form intellectual arguments.
Together, they became part of what their supporters regard as an intellectual fight for the soul of Europe.
Their work has focused on questions including national sovereignty, migration, family policy, freedom of expression, European integration and the transfer of political authority from national capitals to Brussels. In an institutional environment where leftist and federalist organizations have traditionally enjoyed a much larger presence, the objective was to build a competing infrastructure rather than merely participate occasionally in the debate.
That ambition also explains why the institutions have attracted sustained criticism.
Opponents have frequently portrayed MCC and the organisations around it as instruments of Viktor Orbán’s political influence in Brussels, pointing to the substantial public support MCC received during his governments.
MCC and its supporters reject the description of the network as an “Orbán propaganda machine.” Their argument is more straightforward: these are openly conservative and sovereigntist projects that received support from a Hungarian government that considered the construction of conservative educational, media, and intellectual institutions a legitimate public objective.
The difference is not just a matter of spelling. European political and intellectual life already depends heavily on foundations, universities, NGOs, research organisations, and media projects financed through governments, European institutions, or politically aligned donors. The disagreement surrounding MCC has therefore never been solely about whether political ideas receive institutional funding, but also about which ideas receive it and who controls the institutions distributing those resources.
That model is now being challenged from Budapest.
The new government led by Péter Magyar has accused MCC of belonging to a state-backed political network created to advance the positions of the former Orbán government. Magyar has said that the state will no longer finance MCC institutions and has called for the examination of asset transfers made during the previous administration.
The consequences reached Brussels quickly. As early as June, Furedi acknowledged that MCC Brussels was facing a “financial crisis” and was looking for alternative sources of funding amid the possibility that resources from Hungary could disappear permanently.
The subsequent failure to transfer the expected funds left the organization unable to meet its obligations.
Furedi now considers the contractual relationship broken.
“MCC Brussels is finished because it has no money. It cannot pay its bills, its creditors or its employees,” he said. He nevertheless said he was already in discussions with potential private funders about creating a new initiative capable of performing a similar role.
