Budapest Forum

Year: 2023

  • Helena Dalli (online)

    Helena Dalli is the European Commissioner for Equality.

    Helena Dalli is the first EU Commissioner for Equality who has been entrusted by President von der Leyen to deliver on the Union of Equality chapter, by strengthening Europe’s commitment to equality and inclusion.

    Dr. Dalli has held various political roles in Malta, including Member of Parliament (1996 to 2019), Minister for European Affairs and Equality (2017 to 2019), and Minister for Social Dialogue, Consumer Affairs and Civil Liberties (2013-2017). Her portfolio as a minister included the areas of European affairs, equality, human rights, migrant integration, industrial relations, social dialogue, and occupational health and safety. Commissioner Dalli holds a PhD in Political Sociology from the University of Nottingham, and has lectured at the University of Malta.

  • Ada Ámon

    Ada Ámon

    Ada Ámon is the Head of Department of Climate and Environmental Affairs at the Budapest City Hall.

    Ada Ámon is Chief Advisor to the Mayor of Budapest on Climate Affairs at Budapest City Hall and head of the city’s newly established climate department. She is committed to improving the lives of Budapest’s residents through an ambitious programme of urban building renovation and integrating large-scale renewable technology. In 2015, she joined E3G – Third Generation Environmentalism – an independent climate change think tank as a senior associate leading the Central Eastern European climate programme. She has been the director of the Budapest based ENERGIAKLUB Climate Policy Institute and Applied Communication, a leading central European energy think tank, specialising in energy efficiency, renewables and climate adaptation. Prior to this, she worked as a consultant for the London-based International Institute for Energy Conservation (IIEC) and as the energy coordinator of CEE Bankwatch. She was initiator or/and board member of many energy and climate-related international programmes and cooperation. Ada Ámon is one of 3 women recognised in the Women in Energy category of the EU Sustainable Energy Awards 2020 for their commitment to push energy efficiency into the mainstream, as well engage and empower citizens to play their part in the clean energy transition.

  • Goran Buldioski

    Goran Buldioski is executive director of Open Society–Europe and Central Asia.

    Buldioski’s areas of expertise include democratic transition, civil society, citizen participation, and effective government in Europe, notably Central and Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans. Before joining the Open Society Foundations, he worked for the Council of Europe, the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation, and the National Youth Council of Macedonia. Buldioski’s publications on democracy, think tanks, and policy-relevant issues have appeared in Politico Europe, Foreign Policy, ZEIT Online, openDemocracy, Mediapart, and the Independent, among others. He is a member of the European Council of Foreign Relations.

    Buldioski holds MA degrees in public policy from Central European University and in organizational behavior from George Washington University.

  • Gladden Pappin

    Gladden Pappin is president of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs.

    A native of the United States, Dr. Pappin has been a visiting senior fellow at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium since 2021. Prior to joining HIIA, Dr. Pappin was associate professor of politics at the University of Dallas. Dr. Pappin is the cofounder and deputy editor of American Affairs as well as the cofounder of Postliberal Order. He is a permanent research fellow and senior adviser at the University of Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, and he is also an alumnus of the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (2013). Since 2017 he is a Knight of Magistral Grace in the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, and since 2021 a Knight of Merit in the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St. George. He is also a citizen of the Osage Tribal Nation. He received his BA in history (2004) and his MA and PhD in government (2012), all from Harvard University.

  • Gergely Karácsony

    Gergely Karácsony

    Gergely Szilveszter Karácsony is the Mayor of Budapest, Hungary.

    Karácsony worked for the Medián market and public opinion research company as a research manager. He became Director of Research in 2007. Between 2002 and 2008 he was a political advisor at the Prime Minister’s Office. In addition to that, he worked as a teaching assistant at the Corvinus University of Budapest from 2004, an assistant lecturer from 2007 and an assistant professor from 2008.

    Karácsony became a member of the newly formed Politics Can Be Different (LMP) party in 2009. During the 2010 parliamentary election he served as campaign manager of the party. He became a Member of Parliament from the Budapest regional list (3rd place). In May 2010 he was elected deputy leader of the LMP parliamentary fraction. As a result, he left the Medián firm. He is a political scientist, he previously served as member of the National Assembly (MP) from 2010 to 2014 and Mayor of Zugló from 2014 to 2019.

  • Gábor Kerpel-Fronius

    Gábor Kerpel-Fronius

    Gábor Kerpel-Fronius is the Deputy Mayor of Budapest.

    He was born in Budapest in 1966. After graduating from high school in Budapest, Kerpel-Fronius studied History and French at the Janus Pannonius University in Pécs. He later founded his own IT firm where he worked as system analyst and project manager.

    He joined the centrist-progressive Momentum Movement (which is the biggest opposition party in Budapest) in 2017 after the highly successul “NOlimpia” campaign, which forced the government to withdraw it’s previously submitted application for the 2024 Olympic Games due to corruption concerns. He was the party’s candidate for the mayoral elections of Budapest in 2019. The General Assembly of Budapest elected him as Deputy Mayor responsible for smartcity and participatory government that year.

  • Flóra Garamvölgyi

    Flóra Garamvölgyi

    Flóra Garamvölgyi is a foreign correspondent for RFE/RL’s Hungarian Service. She has been covering foreign affairs for more than a decade and previously worked for Magyar Nemzet, Zoom, and Népszava. Her articles have frequently appeared in the British newspapers, The Guardian and The Observer.

  • Eva van de Rakt

    Eva van de Rakt is the Head of the Division EU/North America at Heinrich Böll Stiftung Berlin.

    She has worked for the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung since 2001. She has been Head of the European Union and North America Division at the Foundation’s headquarters since May 2023. Previously she was Director of the European Union office in Brussels from 2019 to 2023. As Director of the Prague office she was responsible for the Foundation’s activities in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary from 2004 until 2018. Her expertise and focus areas include the future of the European Union and European politics, the prospects of the socio-ecological transformation as well as the protection and promotion of democracy, human rights and gender equality. She was a member of the Board of Directors at the Green European Foundation from 2014 until 2016, and is currently a member of its General Assembly. She has been a member of the Board of Directors at the Czech-German Fund for the Future (Deutsch-Tschechischer Zukunftsfonds) since 2018.

  • Elisa Ferreira (online)

    Elisa Ferreira is the European Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms.

    Before that, she was Vice Governor of the Bank of Portugal. During her tenure, she was Portugal’s representative on the Supervisory Board of the Single Supervisory Mechanism. Elisa was previously a Member of the European Parliament, coordinating for the Group of Socialists and Democrats in the EP’s Economic and Monetary (ECON) Committee and was rapporteur, co-rapporteur or shadow rapporteur of many key legislative files, including the ‘six-pack’ and ‘two-pack’, the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD) and the regulation creating the Single Resolution Mechanism. In Portugal, Elisa was a Member of the Portuguese National Parliament and Portugal’s Minister for Planning following her term as Portugal’s Minister for the Environment. She has also been Executive Vice President of the Porto Industrial Association, Vice President of Portugal’s Northern Region Coordination Commission and member of the Board of Portugal’s Statistics Authority. She has a degree in economics from the University of Porto, and a master’s degree and PhD from the University of Reading in the UK. She is a professor at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Porto (on leave of absence).

  • Eero Yrjö-Koskinen

    Eero Yrjö-Koskinen is the Executive Director of the Institute for European Environmental Policy.

    Eero Yrjö-Koskinen has been appointed IEEP’s Executive Director in November 2022. Eero has extensive experience in environmental management and sustainable development, having worked for 13 years as Executive Director of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, the biggest environmental NGO in Finland. After this, Eero was the Executive Director of Green Budget Europe, a think tank based in Brussels, and the Sustainability Adviser of the Finnish Chamber Commerce. Eero has also worked at the European Parliament after Finland joined the EU in 1995.