Danube Institute and the Heritage Foundation have recently signed a landmark cooperation agreement, deepening Hungary’s transatlantic relations. The Heritage Foundation is one of the most prominent conservative research institutions in the United States and its new partner, the Danube Institute is one of the key conservative think tanks in Hungary. According to its mission statement, the Danube Institute was founded by the Batthyány Lajos Foundation ‘with the aim of encouraging the transmission of ideas and people within the countries of Central Europe and between Central Europe, other parts of Europe, and the English-speaking world.’
Heritage and American conservatives in general have been paying close attention to Hungarian politics and policymaking over the last couple of years, which led to an increasingly intensive cooperation between conservative intellectuals from the two countries, mostly through the platforms of the Danube Institute. While American conservatives have expressed interest in some Hungarian policy matters, such as child protection and support for families, until now, the Danube-Heritage cooperation focused chiefly on geopolitics. In the previous years the two research institutions for instance jointly organised a conference on geopolitics and security.
Else than committing themselves to organising the above mentioned conference on an annual basis in Budapest, attracting hundreds of researchers from across the world, as part of the new cooperation agreement, each year four researchers from the Heritage Foundation will visit Budapest and work with the Danube Institute as visiting researchers. As the Danube Institute primarily focuses on geopolitics, the Heritage Foundation will join Danube in this research field, too.
Apart from the sending visiting fellows on a regular basis to Budapest, the Heritage Foundation will also organise more joint events with Danube in the future, and the sharing of expertise will also intensify between the two institutes the future.
Executive Director of the Danube Institute István Kiss commented on the landmark cooperation agreement by saying that it demonstrates that Hungary has allies in the United States.
István Kiss reminded that American conservatives are happy to learn from good Hungarian practices and suggested that some of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s policies, like banning the promotion of gender ideology in schools and educational institutions, were inspired by Hungary’s child protection legislation. In other words, the Heritage Foundation has now become interested in the Danube Institute not only for the geopolitical research that the Institute produces, but also due to the Institute’s embeddedness in and knowledge of Hungary, István Kiss noted.
Kiss said he is optimistic that the cooperation with the Heritage Foundation will open new doors for the Danube Institute and that in the near future, Hungary can set up similar cooperation agreements with other prominent American research institutions and universities as well. Christopher Rufo, a prominent critique of critical race theory and gender ideology will also be arriving in Budapest from the United States to work at the Danube Institute for a month, which István Kiss hopes will give a boost to further Hungarian-American research cooperation.
