Eörsi was born in Budapest. His grandmother, Ernőné Hajdu Fanni, Auer was a Social democratmember of parliament in 1945-1948. She was arrested and tortured by the Ferenc Szálasi regime in the final months of the war. As a committed democrat, she was one of the 350,000 people purged by the Rákosi regime from 1946 onwards. She was jailed and tortured again. Oddly, the woman who tortured her was the same during both regimes. His father, Gyula Eörsi was a law professor, an author of several books and a major contributor to UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. His mother, Marianna Eörsi was a teacher of Hungarian literature and grammar at high schools. He is a nephew of the Hungarian author and former dissident.
Education
Mátyás Eörsi was educated at the Kossuth Zsuzsa High School in Budapest. He was admitted to the Law Faculty of the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, where he graduated in 1979.
Employment
Eörsi's started his career as in house legal counsel to a Hungarian state company "KOMPLEX Export-Import" in international trading. In 1987 he established his own law firm, Eörsi & Partners which he ran as managing partner until he became an MP. The firm, one of the first private law firms in Hungary, was among others specialized in commercial law and soon became one of the leading Budapest law firms. Although Mátyás Eörsi was a full-time politician now, he is still active as an arbitrator at the Arbitration Court attached to the Hungarian Chamber of Industry and Trade. Since he did not contest the national election in 2010, Eörsi was working for NDI in Jordan and in Libya, for the Democracy Reporting International in Berlin, for the Parliamentary Forum for Democracy in Vilnius. From 2015 until 2017 Eörsi was the senior advisor to the Secretary General and the Head of Admin, Finances and HR at the Community of Democracies in Warsaw. Eörsi was Head of the Election Observation Missions of OSCE/ODIHR in 2017 in the Czech Republic and in 2019 in the Republic of Moldova.
Political biography
Founding member of SZDSZ in 1989. He was elected as MP to the Hungarian National Assembly in 1990. Chairperson of the Foreign Affairs Committee Member, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe State Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Vice-president, Liberal International Leader, ALDE Group Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Bureau Member, ELDR Party Chairperson, European Affairs Committee Floor leader of SZDSZ parliamentary group He joined Democratic Coalition in January 2012. Member of National Council – Democratic Coalition Party, Hungary Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to the President of the Democratic Coalition Party
Foreign policy, political state secretary
In 1994 Mátyás Eörsi became President of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Hungarian Parliament and in 1997 he was appointed Political State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After Hungary's entry into the European Union, Eörsi became the President of the Committee for European Affairs, a position he held for two consecutive term, until 2010, when he was not contesting the national elections.
His wife, Katalin Jemnitz is a biologist at the Chemical Research Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. They have a daughter, Júlia and two sons, Márton and Péter.
