The European Union has emerged as Central Asia’s second-largest trading partner and its leading investor, accounting for over 40 percent of total foreign direct investment, making it an indispensable economic and political actor in the region. Through REPowerEU, Brussels is seeking to diversify energy sources away from Russia, in part by drawing more supplies from the Caspian and Central Asia via Turkey and consolidating its foothold along the Middle Corridor.
As the EU seeks to diversify energy sources and strengthen ties with energy-rich countries of Central Asia and Azerbaijan, especially via the Middle Corridor, Hungary is emerging as an unconventional but active player in the region.
Meeting Point Hungary
In May 2025, Hungary hosted an informal Summit of the Heads of State of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) in Budapest under the theme “Meeting Point of East and West,” underscoring its growing role in the Turkic world and demonstrating its ambition to act as a bridge between the region and Europe.
With more than 160 million people and the seventh-largest land area in the world, the Turkic states of OTS (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) together form the 14th largest global economy, with a combined GDP of around $1.5 trillion in 2022. Over the past decade, their trade has expanded markedly: In 2023, total trade with the rest of the world reached about $1.2 trillion, while intra-OTS trade increased to $42.3 billion.
By securing its observer status in the OTS in 2018 and pursuing an engaged diplomacy with the Turkic world at large, Hungary has been persistently positioning itself as a bridge between Brussels and the energy-rich countries of Central Asia and Azerbaijan.
Against this backdrop, a central question has emerged: Does Hungary’s growing role in the Turkic world make it a genuine gateway for the EU’s pivot to Central Asia, or an obstacle that risks complicating the bloc’s outreach and geopolitical footprint in Eurasia? To answer this, it is essential to look beyond Budapest’s recent summit diplomacy and unpack the broader geopolitical calculus that underpins its recent activism.
Hungary’s “Eastern Opening” Policy
Aimed at anchoring Hungary in the EU and NATO while simultaneously deepening economic and political ties, the “Eastern Opening” was launched in 2010 to recalibrate Budapest’s foreign and economic policies beyond its Western focus. By reducing dependence on EU markets and attracting investment, trade, and energy from eastern partners, the strategy seeks to bolster Hungary’s domestic position, strengthen its bargaining power vis-à-vis Brussels, and enhance its strategic autonomy within the EU.
Within this framework, cooperation with China and Russia play their part, but the Turkic world, especially Central Asia and Azerbaijan, occupies a particularly prominent place. Hungary’s Central Asia policy centers on building effective mechanisms for economic cooperation and, above all, energy supplies. The region is treated as a key market and strategic corridor: rich in natural resources, vital for diversifying Hungary’s energy imports, and central to Budapest’s ambition to act as an economic bridge between East and West.
Viewing the OTS as a key pillar of its regional engagement, Budapest has broadened its relations with the Turkic world across diplomatic, cultural, and economic dimensions, deepening trade and investment ties with the organization’s core member states through a broad spectrum of initiatives, including scholarship programs, diplomatic and political dialogue, and cooperation on energy trade and connectivity.
The Middle Corridor—the trade route linking western China and Europe via Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey—plays a central role in Hungary’s regional vision. Turkic states enjoy significant geostrategic advantages and, with adequate infrastructure, can substantially enhance their position in the global economy: Cargo volumes along the Middle Corridor grew by 62 percent in 2024, reaching 4.5 million tons, with plans to increase capacity to 10 million tons annually by 2027.
Hungary views this shift as an opportunity to develop into a logistics and trade hub for Central and Eastern Europe and, in time, for the wider continent. Recognizing the Middle Corridor’s potential for Europe’s future economic development, Budapest is presenting itself as both willing and able to support its expansion. Hence, the strategic cooperation with Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan is expected to underpin a revived “Silk Road” to the benefit of all the states along the route, including Hungary.
A Difficult Member
Yet Hungary’s ambition to present itself as the EU’s bridge to the Turkic world sits uneasily with its increasingly fraught relationship with Brussels. In recent years, under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, EU-Hungary relations have been anything but straightforward. Tensions over rule-of-law backsliding, corruption, judicial independence, and media freedom have led the European Commission to trigger rule-of-law conditionality and related instruments, suspending around €32 billion in EU funds, with €1 billion already forfeited in 2024 and another €1 billion at risk if conditions are not met by the end of 2025. This financial leverage has become the EU’s main tool for steering Budapest back toward compliance with core democratic and legal standards.
Hungary’s recurrent use of its veto in the European Council is likewise viewed as undermining EU unity and obstructing key decisions. Budapest has held up the reform of the EU’s migration pact, delayed Sweden’s NATO accession even after Turkish ratification, and obstructed aid for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia after Moscow’s fullscale invasion of 2022. Such behavior has reinforced the perception that Hungary is instrumentalizing its veto power less to defend narrowly-defined national interests than to gain political leverage and push for the release of EU funds frozen over corruption and rule-of-law concerns.
Hungary’s energy posture vis-à-vis Russia adds yet another layer of tension. Since the start of Moscow’s war, Budapest has sought exemptions from EU sanctions. This trajectory runs counter to the EU’s shift to a permanent phase-out of Russian gas from 2026-27 onwards.
Budapest and the EU’s Pivot to Central Asia
Central Asian states increasingly perceive Hungary as a distinctly autonomous actor: It has joined Turkic institutional structures, set up joint investment funds, bought gas from Azerbaijan, and elevated narratives of shared history and identity. Budapest deliberately presents itself as a diplomatic and cultural bridge between Europe and Eurasia. While no other EU member state has pursued such a pronounced eastward track, the EU’s own recent engagement in the region, symbolized by the 2025 EU-Central Asia summit in Samarkand, has underscored a shared willingness to deepen cooperation on many fronts with stronger focus on the Middle Corridor as part of the Global Gateway Initiative. This suggests that Hungary is now operating, albeit indirectly, within a broader European turn toward the energy-rich region of Central Asia.
As both an EU member state and OTS observer, Budapest has accumulated political capital and visibility in parts of Central Asia and the wider Turkic world. For many governments in Central Asia, Hungary functions as a convenient political and logistical entry point into the EU. Hungarian cultural and economic soft power in Eurasia is well established. Hence, Hungary’s proximity to the Turkic world and to the energy- and resource-rich states of Central Asia and Azerbaijan is not accidental; it reflects deliberate identity narratives, targeted diplomacy, and clear economic interests.
With upcoming elections in April 2026 and the trajectory of Budapest’s future relations with the EU being uncertain, Hungary’s role in the EU’s pivot to Central Asia remains inherently ambivalent. Whether Hungary’s Eastern Opening Policy becomes a strategic asset or a persistent vulnerability for the EU will depend on whether Budapest, Brussels, and key EU member states can manage the predicament over the rule of law, veto behavior, and Russia policy without paralyzing common foreign and energy policy.
If they handle the relationship with strategic pragmatism, containing points of friction while deliberately integrating Hungary’s eastward activism into a genuinely common approach, Hungary’s role in Central Asia can be folded into a broader European strategy, allowing Budapest to act as a gateway helping to consolidate the EU’s foothold in Central Asia. It depends, however, to a large extent on what happens next in Budapest.
Mavjuda Akramova Ochs is an expert specializing in energy geopolitics and diplomacy in Eurasia, with a research focus on the evolving relations between the European Union and Central Asia, Turkey, and Azerbaijan.
