Balázs Hidvéghi

Balázs Hidvéghi (born 28 November 1970) is a Hungarian politician, former Member of Parliament, and also the Deputy Director for Strategy of Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Union responsible for Hungarian communities in the Carpathian Basin and the Hungarian diaspora.

He graduated from Petőfi Sándor High School in Budapest in 1989, and from the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest in 1995, majoring in English and Hungarian at the Faculty of Humanities (Eötvös Loránd University). In 1991, he obtained Certificate in Diplomacy at the Institute for International Studies at the University of Leeds, England. In 2005, he graduated from the Robert Schuman University of Strasbourg, France with a DEA master's degree at the Institute of European Studies.

Between 1994 and 1996 he worked as a high school teacher at the ELTE Radnóti Miklós High School, and at the same time he was the program director of the CIVITAS association, a Hungarian NGO focusing on democracy and civic participation programs.

In 1997, the Steering Committee of CIVITAS International, an advocacy group for democracy education elected him executive director of the organization. He set up the group’s central office in Strasbourg, France and represented the organization at various international meetings, conferences and advocacy events for the next 3.5 years. From 2001 to 2004 he worked as youth policy advisor at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.

He has been a member of Fidesz since 1989. In the 1990s, he joined the foreign affairs secretariat of the youth movement which he represented at several international meetings. He remained a member of the party during his years abroad, and in 2004 he was invited to work at the European Parliament in Brussels as delegation secretary and advisor to the Hungarian MEP’s in the European People's Party – European Democrats Group (EPP-ED). He worked closely together with MEP József Szájer, the head of the delegation.

Between 2008 and 2010, he was deputy campaign chief of Fidesz. Following the 2010 landslide election victory, he became Deputy State Secretary for International Affairs and External Economic Relations at the Ministry for National Economy. In 2011, he was named President of the Hungarian OECD National Council.

In November 2012 he resigned his post of in the Ministry to join the Fidesz strategic team, this time as Deputy Director responsible for Hungarian communities in the Carpathian basin and the Hungarian diaspora.

He had been a Member of Parliament from July 2013 to May 2014. He served as Deputy Chairman of the Committee on National Cohesion and as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He became a Member of the European Parliament for a short time on 15 May 2014, replacing Erik Bánki.

Hidvéghi was appointed spokesman of the Hungarian National Bank (MNB) in April 2016. He became communications chief of the Fidesz in September 2016, replacing Máté Kocsis. He was elected MEP in the 2019 European Parliament election.

He is married to jurist Brigitta Hidvéghiné Pulay. They live in Budapest with their four children.