Month: October 2025

Models developed by poltextLAB were applied in new research on the 2024 European Parliament elections in Portugal. The article by Tiago Silva and Marina Costa Lobo, titled The 2024 European Parliament Elections in Portugal: Media, Results, and Vote Determinants in National and European Elections, was published in South European Society and Politics. The study examines how media coverage, voter behaviour and political determinants shaped the elections. The study is available here: https://doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2025.2553038Researchers and practitioners can also access the models developed by poltextLAB on HuggingFace: https://huggingface.co/poltextlab

The V2 version of the ParlText database is released. The database is a comprehensive collection of legal and parliamentary texts, specifically focusing on Central-Eastern Europe (namely it includes the legislative speeches and laws of Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia). It contains nearly 2.3 million text vectors and metadata covering the period from the early 1990s up to 2024. The dataset features essential information such as dates, text content, policy titles, and, for speeches, parliamentary agendas, and speaker names.

On 2 October 2025, Miklós Sebők participated in a book launch and academic discussion at the ELTE Centre for Social Sciences, where sociologist and political scientist Andrea Szabó presented her new book, titled “Pattern Following and/or Independent Opinion – Trends in Political Interest in Hungary.”  As part of the event, Miklós Sebők emphasised that Hungarian political interest remains low by European comparison, despite recent signs of change after 2020. He highlighted that shifts in interest have historically been tied to regime changes and critical elections, and that variations are visible across generations and social groups. The presentation explored how political apathy can sometimes signal democratic satisfaction, while renewed civic engagement often emerges during moments of disillusionment. Further details of the event can be found here: https://index.hu/belfold/2025/10/03/politika-kozelet-politikai-erdeklodes-valasztas-rendszervaltas-szabo-andrea-bocskei-balazs-sebok-miklos-valuch-tibor/ Photo: Szollár Zsófi, Index, October 3, 2025

At the Europe as a Global Actor? A Historical Perspective conference hosted by Roma Tre University, Ádám Kerényi (ELTE Centre for Social Sciences) presented a lecture analysing Hungary’s economic convergence within the European Union in comparison to other post-socialist member states. Drawing on Eurostat data and historical policy analysis, Kerényi argued that while the 11 Eastern enlargement countries (EU11) have significantly narrowed the development gap with the EU27 average since accession Hungary’s progress has lagged behind its regional peers. The lecture identified two key drivers of convergence across the EU11: access to the Single Market and substantial net EU transfers. However, in Hungary’s case these advantages were offset by institutional distortions under the post-2010 illiberal policy regime. According to Kerényi, reindustrialisation efforts focused on low value-added assembly investments, while welfare retrenchment and institutional centralisation weakened long-term productivity. Recent suspensions of EU cohesion funding under rule-of-law conditionality further threaten the country’s position within the convergence “club”.

Orsolya Ring gave a presentation at the 3rd MEDem (Monitoring Electoral Democracy in the EU) Conference, held on 29–30 September 2025 in Cologne. Her talk, titled “Integrating Frameworks, Databases, and AI in Comparative Research,” introduced a novel approach to combining established coding frameworks, multilingual databases, and AI-based analysis tools to advance cross-national research in political and media studies. The presentation illustrated how the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) can be connected with AI-assisted tools such as the Babel Machine, a no-code solution enabling automatic classification of texts across more than 100 languages. This integration supports greater comparability, scalability, and replicability in media and policy research. Find more details about the conference here: https://www.medem.eu/from-data-to-impact-medem-conference-2025/