The European Conservative ceasing publication

When Viktor Orbán was voted out of office in April 2026, the magazine The European Conservative lost its funding. The English-language magazine was originally founded in 2008 by members of the right-wing think tank Center for European Renewal (CER). Later, European Conservative Nonprofit Ltd, the European Documentation and Information Center (CEDI) in Vienna, and Nazione Futura in Italy served as its publishers.

The magazine was based in Budapest. This was no coincidence, as it had been funded by a Hungarian foundation since 2018. Through the magazine, the Hungarian government under Viktor Orbán sought to exert influence over the conservative and far-right movements in Europe.

At the end of 2024, control of the company that published the magazine was transferred to the Matthias Corvinus Collegium (MCC). The MCC spun off the website europeanconservative.com from the magazine.

Most recently, the magazine was published quarterly. The editorial board included Wolfgang Fenske from Berlin, the director of the new-right think tank Bibliothek des Konservatismus. Authors from Germany also wrote for the publication, such as AfD member of parliament Marc Jongen.

Alvino-Mario Fantini had served as editor-in-chief since 2012. He announced the magazine’s discontinuation on the platform “X”: „In April 2026, after the change of government in Budapest, the Hungarian state moved to dissolve the public-interest foundation that had governed MCC—and thus sought to take control of all its functions and assets. This included The European Conservative. Unfortunately, The European Conservative has been abandoned by everyone in MCC and in the previous Hungarian government.“

Furthermore, Fantini laments that „nor anyone at MCC who had taken ownership of the project in 2014 (and who had unwisely divided the project into two divisions) has bothered to make any public statement defending it nor lament its fate. Thus, as of last week, the new Hungarian government—the Ministry of Finance, specifically—has taken ownership of The European Conservative.“

Redaktion: Ulli Jentsch