The Democratic Community of Welfare and Freedom ( hu, Jólét és Szabadság Demokrata Közösség), abbreviated to JESZ, is a centre-right political party in

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...

. It has a liberal conservative and

Christian democratic Christian democracy (sometimes named Centrist democracy) is a political ideology that emerged in 19th-century Europe under the influence of Catholic social teaching and neo-Calvinism. It was conceived as a combination of modern democratic ...

ideology. This party is the legal successor to the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF). Since 2014, the party does not perform any activity, but is still registered as an active party.

History

The Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), which had governed Hungary between 1990 and 1994, received only 2.67% of the vote and failed to win any parliamentary seat in the 2010 parliamentary election. Party president

Ibolya Dávid Ibolya Dávid (born 1954 in Baja, Hungary) is a Hungarian lawyer, politician, she was the president of the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) between 1999 and 2010. Dávid was the Hungarian Minister of Justice between 1998 and 2002. She was the o ...

immediately resigned and retired from politics. Upon her resignation, Károly Herényi served as interim party president until the congress on 10 June 2010, when Zsolt Makay was elected the new leader of the now extra-parliamentary MDF. In December 2010, the newly elected leadership decided to transform the party and adopted a new name, Welfare and Freedom (JESZ) on 12 December 2010. The party's congress approved the change of name in March 2011, as a result the Democratic Community of Welfare and Freedom (JESZ) was established officially on 8 April 2011.Jólét és Szabadság Demokrata Közösségre változik az MDF neve
Index.hu, 5 March 2011. The MDF had gained 5.04% of the vote and its list leader, the non-partisan economist Lajos Bokros was elected

Member of the European Parliament A Member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the ECSC) first met in 1952, its ...

(MEP) in the

2009 European Parliament election The 2009 European Parliament election was held in the 27 member states of the European Union (EU) between 4 and 7 June 2009. A total of 736 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) were elected to represent some 500 million Europeans, making th ...

. Bokros was also the party's candidate for the position of prime minister during the 2010 national election. After the failure, all relationship has been lost between Bokros and JESZ, which called the politician several times in the upcoming years to give back his MEP mandate. Bokros refused this, thus the JESZ took legal action in that matter, demanding hundreds of millions HUF however it was rejected by the metropolitan court in the absence of a legal basis. For the 2014 parliamentary election, the JESZ campaigned with stickers distribute to drivers in return for payment, but later these promised payments were not fulfilled in every case. In other cases, the party used the portraits of non-JESZ politicians in their posters without permission, including

Zoltán Pokorni Zoltán Pokorni (born 10 January 1962) is a Hungarian educator and politician, who served as Minister of Education between 1998 and 2001. He finished his studies in the Eötvös Loránd University in 1987. After that he worked as a teacher f ...

Tímea Szabó Tímea Szabó (born 18 January 1976) is a Hungarian humanitarian worker, journalist and politician. She has been a member of the National Assembly (MP) since 2010 from the Politics Can Be Different (LMP) National List, and since the 2014 electi ...

Bernadett Szél Dr. Bernadett Szél (born 9 March 1977) is a Hungarian economist and politician, and was a National Assembly of Hungary, member of the National Assembly (MP) between 2012 and 2022. She was co-President of the Politics Can Be Different (''Lehet M� ...

and

Attila Chikán Attila Chikán (born 4 April 1944, in Budapest) is a Hungarian economist, university professor, Full Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. His research areas are nation ...

. As a result the National Election Committee (NVB) imposed a fine of HUF 1.5 million. The party planned to run in the

2014 European Parliament election The 2014 European Parliament election was held in the European Union, from 22 to 25 May 2014. It was the 8th parliamentary election since the first direct elections in 1979, and the first in which the European political parties fielded candid ...

, however its registration was refused by the National Election Office (NVI) after it failed to collect required 20 thousand coupons.

Leadership

Party leaders * Zsolt Makay (2011–2015) * László Sass (2015–present)

Election results

Footnotes

External links

Official web site
{{Hungarian political parties Conservative parties in Hungary Political parties established in 2011 2011 establishments in Hungary Christian democratic parties in Europe Christian political parties in Hungary Catholic political parties