Mikepércs is a

village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...

in Hajdú-Bihar county, in the

Northern Great Plain The Northern Great Plain ( ) is a statistical ( NUTS 2) region of Hungary. It is part of the Great Plain and North (NUTS 1) region. The Northern Great Plain includes the counties of Hajdú-Bihar, Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok, and Szabolcs-Szatmár-Be ...

region In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as areas, zones, lands or territories, are portions of the Earth's surface that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and ...

of eastern

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, 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 and ...

Geography

It covers an

area Area is the measure of a region's size on a surface. The area of a plane region or ''plane area'' refers to the area of a shape or planar lamina, while '' surface area'' refers to the area of an open surface or the boundary of a three-di ...

of and has a

population Population is a set of humans or other organisms in a given region or area. Governments conduct a census to quantify the resident population size within a given jurisdiction. The term is also applied to non-human animals, microorganisms, and pl ...

of 4,480 people (2015).

Economy

CATL battery factory

As part of Hungarian president

Viktor Orbán Viktor Mihály Orbán (; born 31 May 1963) is a Hungarian lawyer and politician who has been the 56th prime minister of Hungary since 2010, previously holding the office from 1998 to 2002. He has also led the Fidesz political party since 200 ...

's 2010 "Eastern Opening" policy of economic realignment towards

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

and

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

, on 12August 2022, Chinese

battery Battery or batterie most often refers to: * Electric battery, a device that provides electrical power * Battery (crime), a crime involving unlawful physical contact Battery may also refer to: Energy source * Battery indicator, a device whic ...

manufacturer

CATL Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL) is a Chinese battery manufacturer and technology company founded in 2011 that specializes in the manufacturing of lithium-ion battery, lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and energy st ...

announced it would construct a USD$7.8billion, 100

GWh A kilowatt-hour ( unit symbol: kW⋅h or kW h; commonly written as kWh) is a non-SI unit of energy equal to 3.6 megajoules (MJ) in SI units, which is the energy delivered by one kilowatt of power for one hour. Kilowatt-hours are a commo ...

battery factory on 221

hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), that is, square metres (), and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. ...

s of land located in the Southern Economic Zone in

Debrecen Debrecen ( ; ; ; ) is Hungary's cities of Hungary, second-largest city, after Budapest, the regional centre of the Northern Great Plain Regions of Hungary, region and the seat of Hajdú-Bihar County. A city with county rights, it was the large ...

; the project was hailed by Hungary's governing

Fidesz Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance (; ) is a national-conservative political party in Hungary led by Viktor Orbán. It has increasingly identified as illiberal. Originally formed in 1988 under the name of Alliance of Young Democrats () as ...

party as the biggest foreign investment in the nation's history, and the factory would be the largest of its kind in Europe. However, residents began to protest as construction began, sparked in late 2022 by a street protest organised by a group of local women. At two public hearings regarding the project, townspeople started fights and shouted at government officials, calling them traitors a reporter for local newspaper ''Debreciner'' described "hundreds of people yelling and fighting". Mikepércs' mayor Timár Zoltán announced he was also opposed to the project, despite being a member of Fidesz himself; similarly,

György Matolcsy György Huba Matolcsy (born 18 July 1955, Budapest) is a Hungary, Hungarian politician and economist, current governor of the Hungarian National Bank (MNB). He also served as Minister of Finance (Hungary), Minister of National Economy from 2000 ...

, the governor of the

Hungarian National Bank The Hungarian National Bank ( , MNB) is the central bank of Hungary and as such part of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). It was established in 1924 as a successor entity of the Austro-Hungarian Bank, under the economic assistance ...

, also came out against the factory. Residents are concerned about pollution, property values, and unemployment. Zoltán told the ''New York Times'' that CATL had told him it was "too busy" to send a representative to a town-hall meeting. In response, Fidesz has blamed

George Soros George Soros (born György Schwartz; August 12, 1930) is an American investor and philanthropist. , he has a net worth of US$7.2 billion, Note that this site is updated daily. having donated more than $32 billion to the Open Society Foundat ...

for fomenting protests;

mayor László Papp blamed "fake information" for the locals' opposition.

References

Populated places in Hajdú-Bihar County {{Hajdu-geo-stub