“Gábor Pósfai’s ministerial position guarantees that the end of the era when political orders often overrode and undermined professional aspects in law enforcement,” Magyar wrote in his post announcing the new appointments on May 2.
The minister’s first task will be to restore the respect and authority of those working in the law enforcement, disaster management and related services, Magyar underlined. The ministry will also take over sports policy, with a stress on youth development, sport as a leisure activity, and sport for people with disabilities.
Pósfai previously worked at Decathlon for a total of 19 years, first heading the company’s Hungarian arm and later its Austrian subsidiaries as managing director. He joined Tisza as the party’s operational director in 2024.
Meanwhile, Melléthei-Barna, until now Tisza’s legal director, is charged with restoring the rule of law, legal certainty, and institutional independence. He will be responsible for legislation needed to establish the new National Office for the Recovery and Protection of Public Assets, tasked with reclaiming any state property illicitly acquired under the former government. He is also charged with creating the legislative amendments to secure the suspended EU funds allocated to Hungary.
A graduate of the Pázmány Péter Catholic University and formerly a lawyer with the Freshfields law firm, Melléthei-Barna’s nomination has drawn criticism as he is Magyar’s brother-in-law, having married his sister, Anna Ilona Melléthei-Barna.
The PM-elect admitted the selection of Melléthei-Barna had been difficult, but addressed concerns about nepotism by insisting that he had been chosen for his professional skills and that safeguards would be in place to prevent any conflict of interest. As part of this, Magyar said his sister, a judge, would suspend her judicial work while her brother and husband remain in government service.
Commenting on Magyar’s choice of ministers, Bulcsú Hunyadi, head of programs with the think-tank Political Capital, noted almost all have “very strong professional backgrounds” in their respective fields of responsibility. The new cabinet will contain a selection of both party and independent figures.
“He also chose some who have been well-known public figures, like Dávid Vitézy. I think he looked at their capabilities, to have a strong personality and public support and being capable of public communication,” he told a meeting with foreign journalists just before the announcement of the last appointees.
Róbert László, Hunyadi’s colleague at Political Capital, pointed out that while there were some ministers previously associated with Fidesz (such as Vitézy and András Kármán, the finance pick), others had liberal or left-wing heritage, notably Bálint Ruff, the proposed head of the Prime Minister’s Office and formerly a political adviser on the liberal side, and Judit Lannert, the incoming education minister.
“Now everybody on the liberal political landscape is applauding Lannert,” he said. For László, this wide range of political backgrounds also illustrates that the new prime minister is keen “to prove that there is no left and no right, only Hungarian, and we can move forward together,” he argued.
Independent political analyst Zoltán Ranschburg agrees that Magyar’s approach to choosing ministers has been largely technocratic.
“This resonates very well with a Hungarian audience. There is a general thought that Hungary is in need of an expert government. [The logic is,] if we put experts in decision-making positions, they’re going to know how to go forward,” he says.
For Ranschburg, this approach is integral to the Tisza leader’s thinking. “Magyar’s communication has often been very technocratic. He seems to strengthen the idea that ‘we can do it the right way,’” Ranschburg says. He is, however, skeptical of this approach.
“I think […] it doesn’t work like that, because there are decisions in politics that have to be made on an ideological basis. You have to choose between different, possibly good options, and those decisions have to be made on ideological considerations, and what you consider to be more important,” he argues.
“Of course, Tisza has a party program, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect the positions of all Tisza MPs. We have no idea what they believe on certain ideological issues. I don’t know if, by 2030, Tisza in its current form will be on the ballots,” he cautions.
With 37 years in management at Shell, including a decade as a vice president, István Kapitány, 64, brings a wealth of international business experience to the Tisza cabinet, having held senior positions in Hungary, Germany, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States.
According to Forbes magazine, as VP of Shell, he successfully managed and shaped the company’s world-leading mobility, retail and lubricants business, where he was responsible for more than 500,000 employees and 45,000 retail outlets in 85 countries. He also played a significant role in Hungarian leadership training, mentoring, and economic public life. Between 2020 and 2025, he served as president of the Hungarian Management Association.
In 2023, Kapitány was awarded the Hungarian Order of Merit by outgoing foreign minister Péter Szijjártó.
Announcing his allegiance to Tisza in January, Kapitány said, “I owe it to this country that I am who I am. The moment has come when I must turn the skills and experience gained on the international market for the benefit of Hungarians.”
He has repeatedly stressed the need to eliminate corruption and reestablish trust, legal certainty and predictability in the Hungarian business world as the basis for economic growth and has been an integral part of the Tisza team working to unlock suspended EU funding since the election.
In a short Facebook video posted on May 2, Kapitány likened a national economy to an aircraft carrier rather than a sailing yacht, warning that not all problems can be solved within 100 days. However, with the right guidance, the economy could be directed in a positive direction within the first three months.
“We will review the regulations governing subsidies paid to multinational companies operating in Hungary and build a new form of cooperation that will benefit Hungarian citizens, the state and large employers alike,” he said. He also reiterated that the employment of third-country guest workers would be suspended from June 1.
“István Kapitány has built an outstanding international career, rising to senior global roles at Shell, and brings a rare combination of strategic clarity, execution discipline, and genuine leadership credibility across cultures,” János Takács, managing director of the Hungarian Dairy Research Institute, told the BBJ.
Takács, like Kapitány a former president of the Hungarian Managers Association, says the incoming minister’s professionalism and global perspective could add significant weight to the Tisza government, although his primarily corporate background “may still require some adaptation to the dynamics of public governance.”
From refurbishing rail track and stations and introducing a standardized train fare system to reviewing the national motorway concession and fixing the thousands of potholes in Hungarian roads, Dávid Vitézy laid out his many projects in a Facebook post after accepting Péter Magyar’s request to be part of the next cabinet in late April.
He promised professionalism, hard work and the elimination of the arrogance of power. “I would like to continue to be a professional. Someone for whom politics is not a goal, but a means,” he stated. Now 40, Vitézy embodies the very essence of the concept of the “expert” rather than the “politician.” Aged 15, he was already in the media, advocating for more buses and better public transport for Budapest.
“My big first success was the new night-bus network, which is now more than 20 years old, in 2005,” he told foreign journalists when campaigning to be mayor of Budapest in 2024.
Armed with a master’s in urban and regional planning from the Budapest University of Technology, and part of a transport activist group, Vitézy lobbied the incoming mayor, István Tarlós, to restructure public transport using the Transport-for-London model adopted by the U.K. capital. As a result, he was appointed CEO of the newly formed Budapest Transport Center (BKK) in 2010.
“I was charged with setting up the whole transformation of Budapest transport management and governance from a very old, post-Socialist way of managing public transportation into a more 21st-century approach, multi-modality, managing cycling, taxis, roads, street space, public space and public transport altogether,” he recalled.
Having led the BKK for four years, Vitézy was dismissed after a dispute with Tarlós and the central government over the decision to use refurbished, Soviet-era rolling stock for Budapest’s M3 metro line. The mayor accused Vitézy of being impossible to work with.
Vitézy narrowly lost the 2024 Budapest mayoral election to Gergely Karácsony, though he won a seat on the city council as part of the reformist Podmaniczky Movement.
Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi, who turned 53 on May 5, was “one of the first weighty people” to join the Tisza Party and went on to “play a very relevant part in the [election] campaign,” according to Róbert László, of the think-tank Political Capital. It was thus “very evident” he would be the Defense Minister should Tisza prevail.
Having joined the Hungarian army in 1995, Ruszin-Szendi worked his way up from the artillery to become chief of staff, the highest position in the defense forces, in 2021. En route, he earned a Master of Strategic Sciences degree from the U.S. Army Staff College in Pennsylvania, and served stints as a commander in military campaigns in both Iraq and Afghanistan. However, he was dismissed as chief of staff after just two years at the helm for reasons that remain unclear.
After joining Tisza in February 2025, Ruszin-Szendi came under attack in the pro-Fidesz media, accused of building a “luxury villa” costing more than HUF 1 bln from public funds, of staying in five-star hotels when his conditions of service limited him to four-star accommodation, and later for being spotted with a concealed (but licensed) pistol at a Tisza Party function. Police later confiscated the weapon.
Ruszin-Szendi has promised to undertake a comprehensive review of the defense ministry, the armed forces, and the various associated institutions, with a particular focus on financial management. He said the armed forces should prioritize equipment, salaries, and working conditions over costly image campaigns, and has stressed that any suspected financial wrongdoing will result in legal proceedings.
Despite his impressive-looking military record, two former Hungarian army officers voiced doubts to the BBJ over Ruszin-Szendi’s suitability as minister. One, speaking on condition of anonymity, described him as “an opportunistic and narcissistic man […] If he behaves […] as he did as chief of the general staff, it will be a problem.”
Zsolt Hegedűs, set to head Hungary’s newly independent health ministry, gained global fame on April 12 after his dance of glee on the Tisza election victory podium went viral on social media channels.
Hegedűs, who turns 57 the day after this edition of the BBJ is published, graduated from the Semmelweis University, Faculty of Medicine in 1994 and qualified as an orthopedic specialist in 1999. In 2005, he moved to work in the U.K.’s National Health Service, first as the head of the orthopedic department at North Manchester General Hospital.
Later, he was the head surgeon at the Cirencester Treatment Center, an institution which, he says, has the best long-term results in the United Kingdom in implanting hip and knee prostheses. This is the result of “working as a team using best practices,” he told Telex.
A key aspect of this is to allow the patients themselves to decide about their treatment, “for which it is essential to be able to compare hospitals and their results,” he said. By comparison, “What is going on in Hungary is a completely bad, outdated system: the patient is not put in a decision-making position.”
After returning to Hungary in 2015, he was eager to raise ethical standards in the domestic profession. He joined a doctors’ movement that “contributed greatly to the abolition of gratuity payments in Hungary, and also to the replacement of the then leadership of the Hungarian Medical Chamber,” he said.
Hegedűs took a swipe at Fidesz’s merger of the health ministry into the interior minister’s portfolio, describing how he and others, with knowledge gained abroad, had prepared much material for the Orbán government, which was ignored. “You wouldn’t know how much useful professional material on the transformation of healthcare is in the drawers of top political leaders, like [outgoing interior minister] Sándor Pintér,” he lamented. “I applied to Tisza because I feel that my visions can really be realized here.”
• Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs: Anita Orbán
• Agriculture and Food Economy: Szabolcs Bóna
• Children and Education: Judit Lannert
• Defense: Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi
• Economy and Energy: István Kapitány
• Environment: László Gajdos
• Finance: András Kármán
• Health: Zsolt Hegedűs
• Interior: Gábor Pósfai
• Justice: Márton Melléthei-Barna
• Prime Minister’s Office: Bálint Ruff
• Rural Development: Viktória Lőrincz
• Science and Technology: Zoltán Tanács
• Social and Family Affairs: Vilmos Kátai-Németh
• Social Relations and Culture: Zoltán Tarr
• Transport and Investment: Dávid Vitézy
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of May 8, 2026.
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