Facebook has deleted the recording of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s speech from public television’s page, with the absurd allegation that the video shared symbols associated with ‘dangerous’ individuals and organizations. Orbán spoke at the Peace March held on Saturday, discussing peace in Ukraine and the upcoming European elections.

Albeit on Monday the public was informed that only Tibor Kapu and Gyula Cserényi have been selected as the astronauts for the programme, the other two candidates who had been included in the final round of selection, clinical orthopaedic surgeon Ádám Schlégl and aerospace design engineer András Szakály, will nonetheless assist with the work of the HUNOR mission in leading positions on the staff of the mission’s ground-based control centre. As for Kapu and Cserényi, they will soon be sent to the United States, where they will undergo the final phase of their training, supervised and assisted by the US space agency NASA and the private company Axiom Space, Hungary’s international space exploration partners.

On 21 May, pro-Palestinian individuals aggressively disrupted an even at the Danube Institute. However, they failed to silence the Israeli representatives who came to Hungary to bear witness to the brutality of Hamas on 7 October. What they managed to do, however, was to illustrate a crucial difference between the two sides: while Israeli advocates presented their arguments intelligently and peacefully, related their painful experiences, and even when they were shouted at answered questions, the Palestinian protesters had no substantive arguments; instead, they shouted antisemitic slogans full of hatred, and in a deeply disrespectful manner, tried to do everything to silence the Israelis and those who support them.

The event was organized by the Defence Sports Federation established in 2017 to provide young people with unique, military-style pre-training opportunities. This year saw a record number of entries, and the cadet training programme, also launched in 2017 on a voluntary basis for secondary school students, has also set a new record with 149 schools now contracted to the federation.

In what was a highly controversial process from the very beginning, a Manhattan jury found former President Donald Trump guilty on all felony counts. Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán expressed his continued support of the former President on social media, highlighting that ultimately it would be the American people to ‘make their verdict this November’.

‘It does have some positive effect to see political opponents act so civilly with each other. However, it also subtracted from the entertainment value of the debate; and the performances were less persuasive as well, less likely to have enough impact to change somebody’s vote.’

According to a statement from the F.D. Roosevelt University Hospital, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has been discharged and is currently under home care. Fico was shot five times on 15 May and has undergone several life-saving operations over the past two weeks.

The Veszprém Zoo is characterized by conscious and continuous development, expanding year by year. The new big cat enclosure was realized with funds from the government’s Modern Cities Programme.

For reasons unknown, the Facebook page of the Hungarian pro-Israel news website Neokohn.hu was banned by Meta on Sunday. EMIH Chief Rabbi Slomó Köves’ page was also removed. Both pages have since been restored, but the incidents are quite troubling, considering the that the bans appear to have had no basis whatsoever.

The grant allows for the production of public service programmes to be broadcast in all four quarters of the year, airing weekly on the same day and at the same time. According to the statement, 32 applications were received in the first round, of which 29 were deemed worthy of support by the council.

Ferenc Kovács, the owner of Aurora Hotel and a crypto enthusiast, announced in a Twitter video that his establishment will be accepting payments in Bitcoin. The video was picked up by multiple major crypto-themed accounts on the social media site.

According to information from POLITICO, EU leaders and some member states want to punish Hungary by giving the country a weak portfolio in the next European Commission. Hungary currently holds the position of Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement, but tensions between Brussels and Budapest are rising due to Hungary’s resistance to Ukraine’s accession.

According to SMER-SD MP Erik Kaliňák, Robert Fico was shot five times in the small intestine, but the Slovak PM’s condition is improving day by day. Fico was shot on 15 May; the shooter was identified as a 71-year-old poet whose attack on the prime minister was clearly politically motivated.

‘Within a few years, Hungary will be among the five countries in the world capable of manufacturing over one million cars annually,’ Péter Szijjártó stated, announcing a new investment in Zalaegerszeg by US Flex.

According to a survey by the MCC Youth Research Institute, 53 per cent of Hungarians aged 15–29 have used ChatGPT or other similar AI tools in the past. A vast majority of them find the new technology useful, with 23 per cent being of the opinion that it is very useful, and 66 per cent that it is rather useful.

According to Hungarian Finance Minister Mihály Varga, Hungary has received an additional HUF 184 billion from previously frozen EU funds. Varga pointed out that these funds serve as an ex-post contribution to the wage increases for teachers and kindergarten teachers, which were pre-financed from the budget.

Day 2 of the Rule of Law as Lawfare Conference featured speeches by István Stumpf, a former justice on the Constitutional Court of Hungary, Aleksander Stępkowski, Supreme Court of Poland justice, and Dr Reinhard Merkel, law professor at Universität Hamburg.

Former US President Donald Trump, the current Republican presidential candidate, spoke about Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in a recent interview, praising the latter’s pro-peace stance on the war in Ukraine. Pro-peace voices are needed more than ever in Europe, as Western leaders prepare for the crucial June elections amid a state of war psychosis.

Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó of Hungary claimed that Hungary will not back outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s candidacy for NATO Secretary General since he had made comments about ‘bringing Hungary to its knees’ in the past, He also added that ‘if a threat is from the East, then maybe the Secretary General should also be from the East’.

Monday’s Foreign Affairs Council meeting was incredibly tense, with Péter Szijjártó coming under enormous pressure regarding the fourteenth sanctions package and the additional military and financial support to be provided to Ukraine. EU foreign ministers continue to criticize the Hungarian government for its pro-peace stance, which it has consistently maintained since the outbreak of the war.

The strengthening of bilateral relations has led to increased participation of Hungarian companies in Uzbekistan. A notable instance of this involvement is the successful acquisition by OTP Bank of a majority share in Ipoteka Bank, the fifth largest bank in Uzbekistan, in December 2021. This year’s Business Forum in Tashkent further deepened the participation of Hungarian companies in the Uzbek market through 137 business-to-business (B2B) and government-to-business (G2B) meetings. These meetings spanned several sectors, including banking, finance, agriculture, transport and logistics, mechanical engineering, pharmaceuticals, and water management, among others.

On the first day of the Rule of Law as Lawfare Conference experts such as Minister of European Union Affairs János Bóka of Hungary and MEP Ryszard Legutko of Poland discussed how the legal concept of the rule of law has been turned into a political weapon by EU bodies, and analysed the double standards applied to different Member States with rule of law assessment procedures.

There is a growing sense that the two right-wing political groups, Identity and Democracy (ID) and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), are willing to form an alliance after the elections. In this context, Marine Le Pen, the de facto leader of the French National Rally, has extended an offer to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to join forces. The new alliance could result in the right-wing bloc becoming the second-largest group in the new European Parliament, surpassing the Socialists.

Incumbent conservative judge Andrew Pinson beat his liberal challenger John Barrow by 10 points in an election for a seat on the Supreme Court of Georgia last Friday. That is despite the fact that Barrow made abortion rights the centre message of the campaign, which is perceived as one of the strongest issues for Democrats in the 2024 presidential election.

The HDZ-led coalition won 34.4 per cent of the votes in the general election, while the Rivers of Justice got 25.4 per cent of the vote, with a turnout of 62.3 per cent. These results give a hint as to what the outcome of the upcoming European Parliament elections may be. (In the EP HDZ is part of the European People’s Party, while SDP is a member of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D).) Precedent shows that if two elections are held shortly after each other the party that won the first election is likely to slightly improve its vote share in the subsequent election.

The Free Market Road Show, held for the ninth time, was organized in collaboration with the Austrian Economics Center and the Danube Institute. This year’s speakers discussed topics such as Central Bank Digital Currencies and the related issues of individual freedom and privacy, new economic strategies for a post-COVID world, and how global security threats, such as wars and migration, affect trade.

At the weekly government press briefing last week the Hungarian PM’s chief of staff, Minister Gergely Gulyás stated that Hungary would not enforce the ICC arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu. He declared that it is not appropriate to use a court as a political tool, and it should be remembered that the ‘utterly ruthless, disgraceful and despicable terrorist attack’ suffered by Israel was the root cause of everything that is happening in the Gaza Strip.

On Thursday, 23 May the Warsaw Institute of Poland organized an online panel discussion on the future of the Visegrad Group, focusing on issues such as the Russo-Ukrainian war and the EU integration of the West Balkans.

The Lithuanian presidency began with Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė outlining the goals of the upcoming term. Firstly, she mentioned the importance of supporting Ukraine in defending itself against Russian aggression, which should be achieved by strengthening democratic institutions in Ukraine and providing further significant support for reconstruction. Secondly, she stressed that a higher level of accountability would be required in connection with international crimes. In this process, the CoE’s expertise should be utilized, for example, to establish a Special International Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine.

As of this May, the National Graphical Programming Competition, established by the John von Neumann Computer Society, will bear the name of Mihály Kovács (1916⁠–⁠2006), Hungary’s first secondary school computer science teacher and a Piarist monk.