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.
This season’s ambassadors of the Highlights of Hungary initiative, aiming to showcase each year the most diverse outstanding Hungarian achievements, have been introduced to the public. A psychologist, a TV personality and gastro blogger, an Olympic champion swimmer, a poet and a musician will each nominate individuals or group efforts from Hungary for recognition as role models.
‘I firmly believe the EU is in dire need of a rule of law instrument but this instrument should be turned upside down. It should guarantee that the principle of rule of law developed and applied in Member States is similarly implemented in the activities of EU institutions.’
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.
During the reign of King Stephen, the political aspect of the King’s devotion to Mary was only secondary and could be seen much more as the individual devotion of a fervent Christian believer to Mary. However, posterity took a different path and gave it national importance, being the basis for the Regnum Marianum idea of the 18th century.
‘Being a conservative in Berkeley is like you’re surrounded by Marxists. I think sometimes Hungary feels the same, surrounded by these European progressive elites,’ John Yoo, former US government official and Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley stated in an interview with Hungarian Conservative.
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.
‘Trump’s presidency promises one certain development: a 180-degree turn; peace instead of war. President Trump’s attitude towards Europe is well known: he is tough on our continent and he does not want to pay for the defence of Europeans at the expense of the US taxpayer. Which brings us to why European leaders would want to send troops to Ukraine when all common sense says it is suicidal and senseless.’
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.
‘The Agreement on the EU–Türkiye Statement regarding the Migration Deal is considered a turning point in EU–Türkiye relations, as it divided opinions on whether it had been worth entering into an alliance with the other party at such a price. However, its strategic importance was intended to be significant.’
Antal Horger famously vowed to never let Attila József, one of the most influential Hungarian poets of the 20th century, get his teaching certificate while teaching at the University of Szeged. For this decision, József went on to immortalize him as the cold-hearted, vindictive ‘overlord’ of the university in his 1937 poem Születésnapomra (For My Birthday), published just months before his suicide.
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 more I travelled in America, the more I realized that there is no state in the U.S. where Hungarians have not created something lasting; where there is not some Hungarian thread, some Hungarian history, some Hungarian contribution. We wanted to visualize this centuries-old creative process and make it easily accessible to the widest possible audience. That’s how the idea of the HuGo app was born, and of course it took years to fine-tune the concept with our developers arriving at the publicly available version we have today.’ Anna Smith Lacey on the HuGo app and the power of the community.
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.
‘The education system has complex social functions, and it may only fulfil its purpose if it sees the child as a whole person. Although its competences as a set of institutions are, and shall be, limited, teaching and education must be more than transmitting knowledge that certain groups of influence find important. With traditional communities having weakened in modern society, and plenty of new challenges continually arising, education should strive to pass on not only factual, but also abstract knowledge accumulated by our culture. The stakes are high; if education fails to accomplish this twofold task, we may face a rapid decline of our civilization.’
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.
The great confederation of the Cumans was one of the steppe tribal confederations of Turkic origin, which successfully represented and spread the once mighty ‘steppe civilization’ to a significant part of Eastern Europe. Although the Cuman state was unfortunately destroyed in the power and political dimensions, the descendants of the Cumans still live here among us in Hungary. People with Cuman-Hungarian identity greatly enriched the medieval (and modern) Hungarian nation and strengthened the Eastern relations of Hungarians alongside the also vital Western connections.
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.
‘In modern Christian Democracy, the Roman Catholic and Protestant lines of thought come together to form a common Christian understanding of a desirable society. Subsidiarity as one of the core principles in social teaching calls for a healthy society, where different vertical levels and horizontal spheres respect each other’s autonomy, even sovereignty, while at the same time bringing them into cooperation.’
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.
‘Energy security, in terms the consumer understands, needs to address three things: reliability, affordability, and acceptability, in that order. These terms apply to a nation state’s understanding of energy security, both because a citizenry not achieving these things will rapidly object and because a nation state is quickly made vulnerable by the instability that comes when energy is no longer reliable, affordable, or acceptable.’
Now that it is almost summertime when a cool beer can come in handy, we invite our readers to a brief journey through time to discover some fun facts about the past and present of beer brewing in Hungary.