Photos of a Tisza Party MP posing beside lions and other exotic animals he shot on African hunting trips have caused a row for Hungary's new government, Index reported on October 5. Kaprinyak is deputy chair of the parliamentary committee that oversees the environment ministry.

Tibor Kaprinyak, a forester and game-management specialist from Hajdu-Bihar county who previously worked for the state forestry company Nyirerdo, appears in the pictures with trophies from luxury safaris, Index reported on October 5. The regional daily Hajdu-bihari Naplo had already reported on his hunting trips during the spring election campaign.

The case cuts against one of the Tisza government's selling points. Environment Minister Laszlo Gajdos, who ran an animal park before entering politics, has made animal welfare the face of his ministry, and the man now helping to scrutinise it is a big-game hunter.

Gajdos said on Facebook on October 4 that he had received thousands of messages about the photos. He condemned all violence against animals and wrote that hunting was "as far from my soul as possible". He added that he could not look an animal in the eye and then take its life. Hunting had been deliberately kept out of his ministry when it was set up, he said, because credible animal-welfare policy could not sit alongside it. Kaprinyak has no role in the ministry and the committee post was the Tisza faction's decision, not his, Gajdos added.

Greenpeace Hungary said that anyone who goes on trophy hunts and poses with dead animals is not credible on conservation, Economx reported. Independent MP Akos Hadhazy, a long-time anti-corruption campaigner, posted the pictures on Facebook and said Kaprinyak should give up the committee seat and could "even leave public life", and criticised the MP and the party for not answering journalists' questions, Ellenszel reported on October 6.

Prime Minister Peter Magyar has proposed that the Tisza faction and its leadership discuss the case on October 12, saying the party needs to define what conduct it will accept. No decision on Kaprinyak's position has been announced, and he has not commented publicly.