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Miklós Hajnal (born April 4 1995 in Budapest) is a Hungarian politician, the president of the Momentum Movement in Budapest, a member of the party's national presidency between 2018 and 2022, and a member of parliament since 2022.

Early Life and Education

Miklós Hajnal grew up in Budapest. He lived in Germany between 1998 and 2003. Between 2005 and 2012, he continued his secondary school studies at the ELTE Radnót Miklós Vocational School, and then in 2014, he graduated from the British International School. In 2014, he continued his higher education at Oxford University in philosophy, politics and economics but did not finish it. In 2021, he pursued legal studies at the ELTE Faculty of Law and State. In addition to his university studies, he worked in Berlin at the Global Public Policy Institute, later at the Central European University in public policy, as well as in the Google office in Brussels.

Political career

He gained recognition during the 2017 Olympic Games campaign as one of the defining figures of the emerging Momentum Movement. In the same year, he was appointed the spokesperson of the Momentum Movement, which became a party. He held this position until 2018 when he was elected as a member of the board.

In the 2018 parliamentary elections in Hungary, he was the parliamentary candidate for the parliamentary constituency of Budapest No. 7 for Momentum.

After the elections, he was elected as a member of the party's executive committee for two years at the party's renewal and re-elected in 2020. When he became a board member, he resigned from his role as spokesperson, but remained a regular guest in television interviews and public debates.

Hajnal was the campaign manager of Momentum in the 2019 European Parliament elections, where the party won two mandates with a result of nearly 10%.

In the 2019 Hungarian local elections, in addition to his work as a national campaign manager, he ran for a seat in the Hegyvidék. In November 2020, he resigned his seat in favour of his party colleague Gábor Vadász, after he was given a broader role in the management of Momentum's national campaign.

Hajnal participated in the coordination of the six-party opposition alliance and represented his party as a member of the National Primary Election Committee.

As the candidate of his party, he won the 2022 opposition primary election in Budapest's parliamentary constituency No. 3, where he ran with the support of Mayor Gergely Karácsony, MSZP-Párbeszéd, Péter Jakab, Jobbik and Új Kezdet. In the 2022 Hungarian parliamentary election, he won his constituency with a percentage result of 48.42%, showing an advantage of 6.6 percentage points over the candidate of the ruling party, thereby gaining a mandate.

In December 2022, Momentum elected Hajnal as the party's president in Budapest.

Public appearances

In 2017-18, he was present both as a participant and organizer in many street protests criticizing the policies of the third and fourth Orbán governments. He regularly participated in demonstrations in support of CEU, which began after the amendment of the Higher Education Act in March 2017. He also played a major role in the anti-government protests in December 2018. He was one of those who led the crowd protesting on Kossuth Square to the MTVA headquarters on Kunigunda Street, where they wanted to hand over a five-point petition to one of the editors working there.

In 2021, he was one of the organizers of the "terrace demonstration" of Momentum, in which they criticized the fact that the government maintained the ban on gatherings citing a state of emergency, while full-house football matches were held in the country. The concept of the demonstration was that it was not officially a demonstration, but that Momentum and the independent representative Bernadett Szél opened a terrace on Kossuth Square in the context of a press conference, referring to the easing of the epidemic.

Activities in Hegyvidék and Bel-Buda

In 2020, he proposed to the District XII Local Government that an official public apology be made for the list of World War II victims on the Turul statue in the district, which included the names of people who were active participants in the Arrow Cross mass murders.

It has also been involved in numerous local community activities, such as civic litter picking, the opening and maintenance of the City Hall Composting Facility and the renovation of the playground on Tállya Street. In the spring of 2020, the Hegyvidék Municipality decided to cancel the district's waste collection, and together with the local Momentum grassroots organisation, it held a voluntary waste collection campaign for the district's residents.

He has publicly criticized Lőrinc Mészáros's wealth several times, citing lack of transparency and corruption. When Mészáros moved to the 12th district, Miklós Hajnal and András Fekete-Győr Hajnal plotted the way to Mészáros' villa in Buda. In connection with the investment of the University of Physical Education, he filed a report with the Economic Competition Office due to cartel suspicions, and then filed a lawsuit against GVH after it refused to open an investigation into the contents of the report. In its final decision, the Capital Court ruled in favor of Hajnal, according to their finding that the GVH rejected the report in an unlawful manner and refused to carry out the competition supervision procedure citing illegal reasons.

Media appearances

He is regularly seen as a guest on various public television programs. He has been an invited guest many times in ATV's Egyenes Beszéd and START programs, and has also appeared on Echo TV's Daily Current Affairs. In addition to his television appearances, he has also been interviewed in the written press. One of his most memorable media appearances was at the Public Media before the 2018 parliamentary elections, when, as a spokesperson for a party with a national list, he was legally allowed to present his party's platform in 5 minutes. Instead of presenting the programme, he interpreted questions to Viktor Orbán from voters responding to a Momentum Facebook appeal.

Family

His mother is Zsuzsa Szvetelszky, a research fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His father is Zoltán Hajnal, a physicist. He has two sisters, Zsófia and Csilla. He currently lives in the XII district of Budapest, in Hegyvidék.

References

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2. "Hajnal Miklós". Momentum Mozgalom (in Hungarian). Retrieved 2023-06-20.
3. Mozgalom, Momentum (2022-05-29). "Megalakult a Momentum új elnöksége". Momentum Mozgalom (in Hungarian). Archived from the original on 2023-01-20. Retrieved 2023-06-20.
4. ^ "Hajnal Miklós". hegyvidek.hu (in Hungarian). 2018. Retrieved 2023-06-20.
5. Zrt, HVG Kiadó (2022-01-25). "Hajnal Miklós: Soha nem állítottam, hogy van diplomám". hvg.hu (in Hungarian). Retrieved 2023-06-20.
6. "Egy 22 éves egyetemistától ijedt meg a hét éve kormányzó Fidesz". Vastagbőr. Retrieved 2023-06-20.
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14. . 2021-10-02 https://elovalasztas2021.hu/hajnal-miklos-bp03. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |accd= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |archívdátum= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |archívurl= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |tit= ignored (help)
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16. BUDAPEST, 03. számú OEVK - Budapest XII. kerület (valasztas.hu)
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20. "Döntött a 12. kerület: első világháborús emlékmű lesz a turulszoborból". azonnali.hu. 2020-06-25. Retrieved 2023-06-20.
21. "Momentum Mozgalom". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2023-06-20.
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24. "Mészáros és Várkonyi villájánál akciózott a Momentum, az Andrássy úton a DK ifjúsági tagozata". telex (in Hungarian). 2021-05-15. Retrieved 2023-06-20.
25. "Hajnal Miklós feljelentette Mészáros Lőrincet és Tiborcz Istvánt kartellgyanú miatt". 24.hu (in Hungarian). 2021-08-11. Retrieved 2023-06-20.
26. "Pert nyert a GVH ellen Hajnal Miklós, levezette, hogyan kartellezhetnek NER-cégek". telex (in Hungarian). 2022-04-08. Retrieved 2023-06-20.
27. ATV. "Egyenes Beszéd Kontra - Hajnal Miklós (Momentum)". ATV.hu. Archived from the original on 2019-01-09. Retrieved 2023-06-20.
28. "A Momentum támogatja a Sargentini-jelentést". www.echotv.hu. Archived from the original on 2019-01-09. Retrieved 2023-06-20. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |archívdátum= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |archívurl= ignored (help)
29. ATV. "A Párbeszéd és a Momentum támogatását is megvonná az ÁSZ". ATV.hu. Archived from the original on 2019-01-09. Retrieved 2023-06-20.
30. MomenTube. "Hajnal Miklós, a Momentum szóvivője a közmédiában". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
31. "Előbb a DK-t kell legyőzni, csak aztán a Fideszt? Momentum–Új Világ előválasztási vita | Válasz Online" (in Hungarian). Retrieved 2023-06-20.