Mayor calls on Chinese factory to leave Debrecen, citing environmental concerns

“Semcorp’s operations are not welcome in Debrecen. We are calling on the company to cease its operations in our city and relocate its production to another location,” László Papp, the Fidesz mayor of Debrecen said in a video posted on his Facebook page.

“There is no place in Debrecen for a company which does not comply with the terms of its licence and does not abide by the rules applicable to it,” Papp stated. The mayor had a meeting with the company’s representatives on Wednesday, during which he informed them that Semcorp had lost the city’s trust and must therefore leave. He said that he had already warned the company in March to comply with operational and environmental regulations, or else face serious consequences. The company has since announced that it has launched an investigation and has asked for patience.

“Semcorp has broken every promise it has ever made, therefore I must say that Semcorp’s activities are not welcome in Debrecen.”

Papp said that going forward, the local government and its affiliated companies will not be cooperating with Semcorp and they do not support the company’s further expansion in Debrecen. He also called on the company to immediately begin environmental remediation in cooperation with the authorities.

Zsolt Tárkányi, State Secretary of the Ministry of Investment and Transportation, who is also an MP representing Debrecen has called on Papp to resign because, according to him, with this statement Papp “has admitted that everything we and local citizens have been saying for years about the battery factories in Debrecen is true.”

Tárkányi recalled that when locals protested against these factories being built in their town, the mayor suppressed the protests.

“You and your cheap propagandists spoke in a despicable manner about those concerned for our city and labeled them foreign agents”, he said. In his view, Papp “is now calling these factories to account for their polluting activities even though he has known for years that these chemical plants are poisoning our environment”.

On 24 June, The Hajdú-Bihar County Government Office ordered that the operations of Semcorp’s battery manufacturing plant in Debrecen be suspended with immediate effect. The decision stated that the Chinese plant's activities deviated from what was specified in its IPPC (Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control) licence, thus threatening the environment and polluting it.

In its justification, the government office stated that when it conducted an on-site inspection at Semcorp on 26 February, they found that an unidentified, steaming substance with a pungent odor was seeping into the soil. The decision also notes that, according to a Semcorp representative, this substance was simply condensation water, which contains no harmful substances or pollutants.

Previously, tests conducted jointly by Greenpeace and the Association of Mikepércs Mothers for the Environment also revealed the presence of solvents and other industrial chemicals in the stream near the plant which manufactures separator film used in batteries.

According to the decree of the government office, operations had to be suspended immediately because continued environmental damage could not be ruled out during the appeal process. Previously, at the end of June, László Papp had requested that the authorities consider revoking Semcorp’s environmental permit.

On June 24, when speaking about the pollution, Papp said that they requested that inspections be carried out and had also filed a criminal complaint in the matter. At the time, the mayor announced that the local government had ordered testing at several locations outside the factory grounds to determine whether areas beyond the plant’s premises had been affected by the contamination.

It will be up to the government office later on to decide whether the factory is able to operate in compliance with regulations and whether its operations can be resumed. “I currently see no guarantee for this due to the irresponsible attitude of the factory’s management we've seen thus far, which is why we are proposing that the plant’s operations be suspended,” said Papp.

The mayor’s words did not impress László Gajdos, Minister for the Environment. "For years, Papp stood behind every investment related to the battery industry and was an enthusiastic supporter of the Fidesz government’s misguided industrial policy. He sacrificed Debrecen and allowed the Orbán government to recklessly rampage it...For him, Debrecen wasn’t the top priority—Fidesz was,” Gajdos wrote in a Facebook post late Wednesday night.

“He consistently ignored the opinions of Debrecen’s citizens and civil society organizations who voiced their concerns again and again. In his view, the mayor should take responsibility for the burdens placed on the city which are going to shape the city’s future for a long time to come.

“Before anyone is moved by his statement, let us be clear. He wasn’t even able to offer a sincere apology. Even though that would have been the very least he should have done for the citizens of Debrecen. But he didn't manage…”

According to the minister, the only appropriate response to Papp’s crimes against the city would be his immediate resignation. Zsolt Tárkányi and Enikő Tompa, the two members of Parliament representing the region have also called for the mayor’s resignation.

Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó announced back in the fall of 2021 that the Chinese Semcorp would build a separator film factory costing 65 billion forints in Debrecen’s Southern Economic Zone, where a battery factory, a cathode factory, and several automotive industry suppliers are currently also building factories. At the time, the Hungarian government provided 13 billion forints (nearly 37 million euros) in funding for the project, in exchange for which the company promised to create 440 new jobs. Semcorp eventually launched trial production in the summer of 2025 with more than 440 employees.