The future belongs to free and independent nations that protect their citizens, as well as their economic and moral values, Defence Minister Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky of Hungary said at a commemoration of the 1848–49 revolution and freedom fight in Budapest on Thursday, 14 March.

Speaking at the the Defence Ministry’s commemoration, Minister Szalay-Bobrovniczky said he was convinced that the future did not belong to ’empires…following ideologies’, but to free and independent nations.

‘We have entered the era of dangers; the peace that we enjoyed for decades is now a thing of the past,

a war is raging in our neighbourhood as well as in the Middle East,’ he went on to state.

The minister also recalled that the freedom fighters of 1848 had built their own army from scratch, with exemplary success.

‘Today, our generation has the opportunity to build our own army, the force that guarantees the armed defence of the nation,’ Szalay-Bobrovniczky said. ‘This is our task, and in that we are no different from the revolutionaries of 1848.’

The government has ensured that more than two per cent of GDP can be spent on defence, and the leadership of the military has been rejuvenated. Also, the two big recent recruitment campaigns have been successful, and the military development programme is progressing well, he said. The defence industry is also undergoing a huge development, without which ‘there would be no Hungarian national defence, no Hungarian economy,’ he declared.

‘1848 was the school of freedom,’ the minister stated, adding that this was based on the enthusiasm Hungarian youth had for liberty. He said he could see ‘the same joy and enthusiasm on the faces of today’s young people’ when they join the Hungarian Armed Forces.

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Sources: MTI/Hungarian Conservative