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.
‘“Today marks a new chapter for Poland,” Ursula von der Leyen claimed in early May when announcing the European Commission’s decision to withdraw its case against Poland in the Article 7 procedure it had launched in 2017. I would add to that: “Today marks a final warning for all conservatives in the EU.”’
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
‘The history of European integration is in fact nothing more than the history of the power struggle of the EU institutions. The powers of the institutions at the core of the current EU have been in a constant state of flux since the beginning of the European project…’
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.
