Alhambra Press, jointly with another Hungarian media company, files a State aid complaint against Hungary.
Alhambra Press, the publisher of the weekly Magyar Hang (Hungarian Voice), has today (Monday, April 28, 2025) lodged a State aid complaint with the European Commission, challenging the Hungarian Government’s advertising practices in the Hungarian media markets. Alhambra Press is joined by another Hungarian media company that wishes to remain undisclosed at this stage.
The complainants are represented by Euclid Law, a specialist EU competition law firm based in Brussels and London. The economic and data analysis underpinning the complaint has been conducted by former Chief Economist at DG COMP, Professor Kai-Uwe Kühn. The work was supported by a research team.
The economic evidence and data show beyond reasonable doubt that the Hungarian media advertising landscape has been severely distorted by the unlawful allocation of government advertising revenue. Government-aligned media outlets have effectively been subsidised to the tune of nearly EUR 1.1 billion since at least 2015, amounting to unlawful and incompatible state aid in breach of EU Treaties. Hungary has a media landscape tailormade to financially benefit government-aligned media outlets, forcing others to the margins.
Magyar Hang has published the complaint and the economic analysis on its website so that the widest pool of stakeholders can contribute to ongoing concerns.
If you have any questions about the case, please contact Csaba Lukács, the managing director of Magyar Hang (lukacs [dot] csaba [at] hang [dot] hu), or Oliver Bretz, the Founding Partner at Euclid Law (oliver [dot] bretz [at] euclid-law [dot] eu) or Peter Guilford () and Caspar Macfie () at Shearwater Global.
