At the height of an investment boom in western Hungary in the late 1990s, multinational investors began running out of locals ready to fill their assembly lines and offices. Many cast their eyes to poorer eastern Hungary, where unemployment was as high as 40 per cent.

Companies such as Audi, IBM and Philips were sure they could persuade job-seekers to move 200km to 300km for well-paying jobs with a prestigious foreign company. But they were wrong. Even within their own country, Hungarians proved largely immobile.