Germany and Hungary agree military reset as Pistorius visits Budapest

Germany wants to expand cooperation with Hungary's new government in the military sphere, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said at a meeting with his new Hungarian counterpart Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi in Budapest on Friday.

Pistorius named military logistics, defence industry cooperation and training as fields for deeper collaboration. "Berlin and Budapest are growing politically closer together again," Pistorius, a Social Democrat, said. 

"This is a restart of relations between our countries, and that in turn is excellent news for our countries, for our peoples, but also for the entire NATO alliance and the European Union," Pistorius said. 

Under the former government of Viktor Orbán, which was regarded as pro-Russian, Hungary was at times an awkward partner within the European Union and NATO.

Orbán was ousted in April elections after 16 years in power, and the new government led by conservative Prime Minister Péter Magyar has carried out a change of course.

Hungarian minister: 'We will be allies again'

There was agreement that Hungary was back on the right track, Ruszin-Szendi said. 

"We will develop our armed forces together again. We are continuing the programmes we launched together," he said, also naming cooperation in the field of the space industry. 

"We will be allies again," he said. "We will act as is expected of us and as we expect of our allies."

Hungary already relies on German military equipment

Germany and Hungary are linked through several defence industry cooperation agreements, and Hungary is modernizing its armed forces with German weapons systems.

In 2018, Hungary ordered 44 Leopard 2 tanks and 24 Panzerhaubitze 2000 self-propelled armoured howitzers from Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, now KNDS. Rheinmetall received a contract worth more than €2 billion ($2.28 billion) in 2020 for the Lynx KF41 infantry fighting vehicle.

In 2024, Rheinmetall opened a plant in Zalaegerszeg in western Hungary, where the Lynx has since been manufactured. In the same year, a Rheinmetall ammunition plant opened in Várpalota, also in the west of the country. 

Rheinmetall has also entered into Hungarian conglomerate 4iG, of which the Germans acquired a 25% stake.

Orbán had promoted cooperation with the German defence industry despite political differences. He was consistently criticized for having simultaneously handed a number of previously state-owned Hungarian defence companies to his own loyalists.

It remains unclear exactly how the new government will handle this. At the meeting with Pistorius, Ruszin-Szendi made clear that a wide-ranging investigation into defence deals and procurement contracts for possible corruption was under way. He said he did not want to pre-empt the authorities.