At a private event, Orbán hints that a Polish citizen may soon be granted political asylum in Hungary

Update: A few hours after the publication of our article, Gergely Gulyás, the Minister at the Prime Minister's Office confirmed that Marcin Romanowski, former Polish Deputy Minister of Justice, has been granted political asylum in Hungary. Romanowski's lawyer did so as well in a post on X.

A Polish citizen may soon be granted political asylum in Hungary – several independent sources have informed Telex that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán made a reference to this at the year-end dinner of the Széll Kálmán Foundation, when speaking about the currently not very good Polish-Hungarian relations. The private event, which was not open to the public, took place on the evening of 10 December at the Kempinski Hotel in Budapest.

The annual event of the Széll Kálmán Foundation is usually attended by economic leaders, businessmen and representatives of the cultural scene, and traditionally includes a speech by Viktor Orbán, who mainly comments on current world events. The foundation, which was established in 2003 and is linked to the right-wing, admittedly aims to monitor and analyse the situation of the Hungarian economy and to organise meetings and professional conferences to improve the same.

According to sources who were present this year, Viktor Orbán, who traditionally makes an appearance at the event and addresses those gathered, talked a lot about the 'connectivity' strategy associated with the Prime Minister's political director Balázs Orbán, and about the need for Hungary to not join the rest of the world as it organizes into blocs, and being open to both East and West, referring to the government's well-known policy of 'economic neutrality'. The head of the Hungarian government, who appeared confident according to those present, also said that there would be money in 2025, but did not say where it would come from.

The Prime Minister criticised both Romania and Poland, and in relation to the latter he made a comment to the effect that a Polish citizen could soon (according to one of the participants, he used the phrase "within a day or two") be granted political asylum in Hungary.

The Prime Minister did not mention a name or anything else in relation to this, and the comment was made in the context of Orbán explaining to his audience how much the world had changed in recent times, a source said.

Orbán's comment is also in line with what he said in an interview published on Thursday in the government-friendly Mandiner. There, he also mentioned the Polish-Hungarian relations and the journalist specifically brought up the issue of "Polish political refugees".

In the interview, Orbán said that the current Polish government sees the Hungarian government as an enemy and that "the Polish liberals have invented a new concept of the rule of law, “the rule of law by martial law".

According to the Prime Minister, the Polish government is using the rule of law and the legal instruments to crack down on its political opponents. "The Polish-Hungarian relationship is at a low point at the moment, because the Polish liberal rainbow coalition is unable to distinguish between party and state politics, even though Poland and Hungary have strategic interests in which we should be helping each other rather than weakening each other," he said, and was then asked whether Hungary would accept Polish political refugees.

Orbán replied:

"We will grant asylum to anyone who faces political persecution in their home country."

The question is, of course, who Orbán may have been referring to at the event of the Széll Kálmán Foundation, who could be the Polish citizen who could realistically be granted political asylum.

One source familiar with Polish-Hungarian relations suggested that Marcin Romanowski, the former deputy justice minister and member of the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, could be someone with grounds to seek help in Hungary. The Polish prosecutor's office suspects him of having been involved in an organised criminal group, and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) decided to waive his immunity on 2 October. Among the 11 corruption charges brought against the former deputy justice minister, one includes the illegal use of more than 10 billion forints’ worth of Polish public money from a justice fund, which was used by the ministry's agencies to acquire the Pegasus spy software, among other things.

Romanowski was previously detained in July, but was released on the grounds of his immunity as a member of the Polish delegation to PACE. Another reason why Romanowski asking Hungary for help may be plausible is because he considers the proceedings against him to be illegitimate.

It is not clear where he is at the moment, but he was in Hungary in October and then reportedly travelled back to Poland.

We have, of course, contacted the Government Information Centre to find out whether a Polish citizen has applied for and been granted political asylum in Hungary, and specifically, whether Romanowski has applied for and been granted asylum. We have put the same question to the Polish Embassy in Budapest, but so far we have not received a reply from either of them.

At the inquiry of Telex, Anna Gielewska, editor-in-chief of Vsquare, asked the Polish government about the matter. When asked whether Romanowski had been granted asylum in Hungary, a senior Polish government source said that “neither the Polish police nor the prosecutor's office had any such information.”

Romanowski would not be the first from the populist right-wing Polish opposition allied with Orbán to try to weather the proceedings against him in Hungary. As VSquare revealed in the summer, Daniel Obajtek, the former head of the Polish oil company Orlen had been holed up in a luxury apartment on Budapest's Andrássy út while waiting to gain immunity from prosecution after winning a seat in the EP elections. And Tomasz Szmydt, a senior judge during the rule of Law and Justice, fled his arrest to Belarus and was granted asylum there by Lukashenko's regime.

There is also the former Prime Minister of Northern Macedonia, Nikola Gruevszki, who fled to Hungary in November 2018 with the help of the Hungarian government to avoid a two-year prison sentence for the illegal purchase of a luxury limousine. The former head of government claims that in his home country, the judiciary and the prosecutor's office had become tools of political blackmail, and are being used for targeting political opponents and covering up government failures. In 2018, Viktor Orbán justified the help given to Gruevski by saying that "one treats one's allies fairly", as Gruevski had supported Hungary in its handling of the 2015 refugee crisis, namely, in the building of the fence along Hungary's southern border. On 11 April this year, the US Treasury Department placed Gruevski under sanctions.