Balázs Tárnok
Balázs Tárnok is the Managing Director of the Europe Strategy Research Institute at the University of Public Service. He is also the Deputy Director of the Training Program on National Minorities at the Károli Interdisciplinary Academy (Károli Gáspár University, Budapest) and Minority Rights Advisor at the Institute for the Protection of Minority Rights, Budapest. He is one of the founding members of the Freedom and Identity in Central Europe (FICE).
He received his legal degree (J.D.) in 2015 at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, Budapest. He studied European and international law as an Erasmus student at the Radboud University Faculty of Law, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He defended his doctoral (Ph.D.) thesis at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University in November 2020. His PhD thesis “The European Citizens’ Initiative as a tool for the protection of the rights and the promotion of the interests of national minorities in the European Union” is currently being published by Ludovika in Budapest. Balázs is also a Translator Specialized in Law, he gained his LL.M. degree at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University Deák Ferenc School of Postgraduate Studies in 2018.
Balázs worked in several organizations gaining experience in the field of minority rights and advocacy, and the law and policies of the European Union. In 2014/15, he worked in the Institute for the Protection of Minority Rights, Budapest. Since 2016, Balázs has been a legal advisor at the Dr. Sobor Law Firm, where he assisted in the court proceedings of the European Citizens’ Initiative on National Minority Regions at the Court of Justice of the European Union. In 2017/18, he was legal expert of the Rákóczi Association (Rákóczi Szövetség) coordinating the Hungarian signature collection campaign of the Minority SafePack Initiative. In 2018, he started working at the State Secretariat for the European Union Relations of the Prime Minister’s Office. Until the end of 2020, he also worked as an international advisor at the International Directorate of University of Public Service.
In 2021, he was the Hungary Foundation’s visiting research fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame, USA. His research focused on human and minority rights and ethnic advocacy in the U.S., paying special attention to the violations of the rights of ethnic Hungarians in Central Europe. His articles have been published by Foreign Policy, The National Interest, Newsweek, and The Washington Times.
Balázs was born and raised in Slovakia. Since 2018, he is the Vice-Chairman of the Rákóczi Association, one of the biggest culture-oriented Hungarian civil society organizations in Central Europe. As an external expert, he was also nominated as a candidate for the 2019 European Parliament elections by the Party of the Hungarian Community in Slovakia. In 2022, he received the Lőrincz Csaba Award presented by the Pro Minoritate Foundation to acknowledge his activities in the field of foreign and national minority policy. In 2022, he also received Hungary Foundation’s Alumni Award.

Balázs Tárnok, J.D., LL.M., Ph.D.
Managing Director, Europe Strategy Research Institute, University of Public Service
Full CV: PDF
Latest from Balázs
Workshop on Ethnic and Religious Minority Rights in Central Europe
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Should the West Be Concerned About Slovakia After the Elections?
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The West Can’t Ignore Slovakia’s Election
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