Ferenc Gyurcsány (born 4 June 1961) is a Hungarian entrepreneur and retired politician who served as Prime Minister of Hungary from 2004 to 2009. Prior to that, he held the position of Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports between 2003 and 2004.
He was nominated as prime minister by the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) on 25 August 2004, after Péter Medgyessy resigned due to a conflict with the Socialist Party's coalition partner. Gyurcsány was elected prime minister on 29 September 2004 in a parliamentary vote (197 yes votes, 12 no votes, with most of the opposition in Parliament not voting). He led his coalition to victory in the 2006 parliamentary election, securing another term as prime minister.
On 24 February 2007, he was elected as the leader of the MSZP, winning 89% of the vote. On 21 March 2009, Gyurcsány announced his intention to resign as prime minister. President László Sólyom stated that instead of a short-term government ruling only until the 2010 elections, early elections should be held. On 28 March 2009 Gyurcsány resigned from his position as party chairman. A minister under Gyurcsány, Gordon Bajnai, became the nominee of MSZP for the post of prime minister in March 2009 and he became prime minister on 14 April.
In October 2011, Gyurcsány and other party members quit the MSZP to establish the Democratic Coalition (DK) under his leadership. In May 2025, he announced his resignation from the leadership of the party, and also his retirement from politics, but remained a member of the party.
Gyurcsány was born in Pápa, Hungary, into an impoverished middle-class family as the only son of Ferenc Gyurcsány Sr. and Katalin Varga.
He has an elder sister, Éva. According to contemporary police documents, Gyurcsány's father was convicted on charges of minor crimes (low value thefts and fraud) multiple times.
Gyurcsány attended Apáczai Csere János High School in Budapest for two years; he then returned to Pápa, Hungary and continued his studies there, at a local grammar school.
In 1979, he was admitted to the University of Pécs, where he studied as a teacher and obtained his B.Sc. in 1984, then he studied economics at the same institution, getting his degree in 1990.
In 1981, he assumed function in the KISZ, the Organisation of Young Communists, where he mostly handled organizing student programs at the beginning. Between 1984 and 1988, he was the vice president of the organisation's committee in Pécs. Then between 1988 and 1989, he was the president of the central KISZ committee of universities and colleges. After the political change in 1989, he became vice-president of the organisation's short-lived quasi successor, the Hungarian Democratic Youth Association (DEMISZ).
From 1990 onwards, he transferred from the public to the private sector. Gyurcsány then took the position of CEO at Altus Ltd., a holding company of which he was owner, from 1992 to 2002 and thereafter as chairman of the board. By 2002, he was listed as the fiftieth-richest person in Hungary.
Gyurcsány returned to politics in 2002 as the head strategic advisor of Péter Medgyessy, the previous prime minister of Hungary. From May 2003 until September 2004 Gyurcsány was a minister responsible for sports, youth and children.
He became the president of the MSZP in Győr-Moson-Sopron county in January 2004, serving until September 2004. In the summer of that same year it seemed that there were larger problems in his relationship with Prime Minister Péter Medgyessy, so he resigned as minister. In a week, problems in the coalition led to the resignation of Medgyessy, and MSZP voted Gyurcsány to become prime minister as he was acceptable for the coalition partner, Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ).
Gyurcsány was reappointed as prime minister after the 2006 parliamentary elections, with his coalition taking 210 of the available 386 parliamentary seats, and making him the first Hungarian prime minister to keep the office after a general election since 1990.
On 24 February 2007, he also became the leader of his party (being the only candidate for the post), gaining 89% of the votes.
However, soon after the election victory serious financial problems arose. His government was forced to implement austerity measures to somehow manage the budget deficit, which was much higher than expected and had grown to an almost 10% of the GDP by the end of 2006. These measures were heavily criticized by both the opposition, led by Fidesz, as being too harsh on the people, and by liberal economists, for not reducing spending enough on social benefits, including pensions.
On 17 September 2006, an audio recording surfaced, allegedly from a closed-door meeting of the Prime Minister's party MSZP, held on 26 May 2006, shortly after MSZP won the election. On the recording, Gyurcsány admitted "We have obviously been lying for the last one and a half to two years." ("Nyilvánvalóan végighazudtuk az utolsó másfél-két évet.") and that "We've been lying at morning, evening, and night" ("Hazudtunk reggel, éjjel, és este."). The later-formed public consensus on the infamous "Őszöd speech" is that Gyurcsány was obviously drunk at the time and that he wasn't supposed to speak on the aforementioned closed-door meeting. Despite public outrage, the Prime Minister refused to resign, and a series of demonstrations started near the Hungarian Parliament, swelling from 2,000 to about 8,000 demonstrators calling for the resignation of Gyurcsány and his government for several weeks. The Prime Minister admitted the authenticity of the recording.
On 1 October, the governing party suffered a landslide defeat in the local municipal elections. On the eve of the elections, before the results were known, President László Sólyom gave a speech in which he said that the solution to the situation is in the hands of the majority in Parliament.
As Prime Minister, Gyurcsány was a strong advocate of the South Stream pipeline project, which aimed to supply Russian gas directly to the European Union (EU), bypassing transit countries such as Ukraine. He signed the contract in Moscow just a week before the popular election in Hungary, which showed around 80% of the votes were against the government reforms.