„I really hate to apply somewhere,“ Werner Patzelt said in an interview. „I like being invited.“ His latest invitation takes the political scientist to Brussels – on behalf of Budapest. Here, Patzelt heads the Brussels office of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), a Hungarian think tank with close ties to the policies of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Orbán is an avowed supporter of illiberal democracy. His Fidesz party left the Christian Democratic EPP group in the European Parliament in 2021. It thus came close to expulsion. Not least because of Fidesz’s anti-EU campaigns, EPP group leader Manfred Weber had broken with Orbán and pushed for his resignation.