The recent visit of Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó to Brunei underscores Hungary’s strategic intent to strengthen its relationships with burgeoning economic regions, notably the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It also signals one of Hungary’s foreign affairs objectives during its forthcoming presidency of the Council of the EU.
The value of the three-part investment is HUF 26 billion, with the government providing approximately HUF 900 million in support, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó announced on 23 May. The minister highlighted at the inauguration ceremony of Siemens Energy Ltd’s new plant that the German conglomerate will manufacture gas turbine burners in its new multifunctional facility and establish a dual training centre there, equipping Hungarian professionals with the knowledge needed for using the latest technologies.
To celebrate the director’s life’s work, the Art+ Cinema theatre in Budapest will screen his iconic films throughout an entire week.
Distinguished scholars, museum curators, and educators gathered at the Polish History Museum in Warsaw, Poland for the 12th European Remembrance Symposium organized by the ERNS to talk about ways to preserve history, the way to teach national history to the next generation, if there is a common European historical narrative, and what it means to be free in Europe in this day and age.
Foreign pro-Palestinian demonstrators disrupted a conference in Budapest on Tuesday where Israel’s ambassador to Hungary Jakov Hadas-Handelsman was also speaking. At around the same time, anti-Israel graffiti flooded the Hungarian capital. For many months, such phenomena were unknown in Hungary, but now it seems that the conflict and hatred are being imported from abroad.
‘The ideological models that had emerged at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries…had transformed social thinking and humanity’s view of the world to such an extent that it was impossible to maintain and preserve the earlier, semi-feudal Europe. This in turn meant that ethnicity and nationality, previously considered less significant elements…became a determining factor, leading not only to an exploration of the historical past of a given community, in the search for national heroes, but also to a demand for political unification with ethnic or linguistic compatriots within a single country.’
Giorgia Meloni has made it her mission to unite the European right after the European elections, effectively opposing the left-wing political groups in the new European Parliament. However, this will be a very difficult task: although they agree on a number of key issues, the two right-wing groups are divided on several matters, most notably foreign policy.
For the first time in its history, Hungary will host the most prestigious club football match, which has previously taken place in 32 stadiums across 28 cities in 15 countries. The Puskás Aréna, inaugurated in 2019, will host its third European cup final following the 2020 Super Cup match and last year’s Europa League final.
Hungarian Minister for National Economy Márton Nagy met with Philipp Haussmann, Deputy Chairman of the German Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations, and Barbara Zollmann, Executive Board Member of the German–Hungarian Chamber of Industry and Commerce on Tuesday at his office. The minister emphasized that Germany is Hungary’s most important economic partner: German companies employ more than 220,000 people in Hungary, and Germany accounts for 24 per cent of Hungary’s foreign trade, making it the country’s number one trading partner.
The 29th Svet Knihy, or Book World Prague International Book Fair and Literary Festival, will feature around 800 exhibitors from 40 countries. On Friday, 24 May the Hungarian organizers will host a V4 literary discussion about the impact of Franz Kafka’s works on Hungarian, Slovak, Czech, and Polish literature and culture.
‘Justice, equality before the law, and freedom. I have travelled the world and have not found a combination of values and structures that better support the flourishing of the human soul and human nature,’ János Csák remarked at the launch of his book titled Genius of America. The Minister of Culture and Innovation’s work delves into how liberty, freedom, and equality before the law have become the United States’ three most important values, and how Americans can rediscover happiness by overcoming the current profound divisions in society.
In his remarks to officials working in the US capital and foreign diplomats, Ambassador Takács pointed out that for the sake of Ukraine and its society, peace and a ceasefire are needed. The sooner negotiations aimed at this can begin, the fewer further casualties will have to be suffered. The Ambassador also emphasized the importance of NATO remaining a defensive alliance focusing on deterrence.
‘In the modern, global-technological civilization based on the parallel structures of technical rationality, the idea of freedom still arises as an “abstract freedom” that is allegedly “the same for everyone”. But, regarding recent facts and conditions, this concept of freedom has lost all realistic content. Following the example of the idea of philosophical atomism, the human individual is still imagined as an atom, and from this social atomism it also follows that the modern individual is no longer an organ of a transcendental reality, but rather the social “whole” is derived from this collective of individuals.’
In truth, “the long arc of harassment, assault, and murder of Palestinians by Jewish settlers is twinned with a shadow history, one of silence, avoidance, and abetment by Israeli officials”, states The New York Times. This is not to downplay the terrorist threat against Israelis by Palestinian jihadists. However, interviews with more than one hundred people—current and former officers of the Israeli military, the National Israeli Police, and the Shin Bet domestic security service; high-ranking Israeli political officials, including four former prime ministers; Palestinian leaders and activists; Israeli human rights lawyers; American officials charged with supporting the Israeli-Palestinian partnership—there appears to be a long history of crime without punishment.’
‘When European elites long for a “Hamiltonian moment”, they imagine that a particular common financial necessity could be the spark that brings about a common political framework as well—hence the continuous return of talk of the “Hamiltonian moment” in discussing the EU’s attempts to deal with the eurozone crisis.’
‘Since 1990, we have had to find new ways of explaining the issues. The communist dictatorships have collapsed, everything seems to be going fine, nice-sounding laws are being passed, but these are not being enforced, and in some cases the situation is deteriorating. The countries have European Union membership, and many border issues have disappeared thanks to the Schengen agreement, but problems remain.’
The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has sought arrest warrants for several leading Israeli politicians and members of the Hamas political leadership, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Allies of Israel, led by Viktor Orbán and Joe Biden, have described the prosecutor’s decision on the Jewish state’s leadership as absurd and shameful.
Gergely Karácsony confidently leads the race for the mayor of Budapest, according to a survey by the Publicus Institute: 46 per cent of all respondents would vote for him in the municipal elections on 9 June.
In a joint interview with General Gábor Böröndi granted to Index, Hungary’s Defence Minister Kristóf Szalay- Bobrovniczky stressed that Hungary’s autonomous, truly deployable and combat-ready armed forces are key to the country’s defence, because if a member state does not have a strong military, NATO membership is not sufficient protection.
Fico was shot in the town of Handlová after an off-site government meeting on 5 May. The pre-trial detention of the suspected perpetrator has been ordered by a Slovak court.
Eight adults were on the motorboat, five of whom—three men and two women—are still being searched for intensively, two were found dead. The ongoing investigation involves IT and water rescue experts. The aim is to determine if anyone is criminally responsible for the accident.
This year, the event will feature over fifty programmes across four stages. In the afternoons discussions introducing prominent authors and their new works will be held, while evenings will offer musical literary productions envisioned for Margó. The festival will include performances by Tudósok, Miklós Vecsei and Gergely Balla with their Mondjad Atikám József Attila evening, while slam poets Pion x Krizsó will play from their Népi lira album.
‘The emerging multipolar, multicivilizational world still needs and will be grateful to have a strong, rational, reliable, and consistent Western civilization…But for that to happen, common sense will have to rule us, and we must consign postmodern liberalism and the Cult of Woke to the trash heap of history.’
‘Conservatives are the only parties in Europe that are rising, and the left is afraid. We can be certain that a paradigm shift would wipe out many leftist politicians, and the elites that pay them clearly don’t want that to happen. They want obedient politicians who follow their agenda. On 9 June Conservatives have a mission: the reconquest of our sovereignty, the reconquest of our security, the reconquest of our economy and industry, the reconquest of our agriculture, the reconquest of our identity.’
Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian President and a potential successor to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, were reported dead following a helicopter crash in the northern area of the country on Sunday. The European Union, China, and Russia have already expressed their condolences, while the United States had remained silent at the time of writing. Israeli officials stated that the Jewish state was not involved in Raisi’s death.
Since 2013, migration pressure on Europe has become the new normal, and in recent years the situation has once again worsened: 2023 saw the highest number of illegal immigrants reaching Europe since 2016. Due to the worsening security situation in the Sahel region and the economic difficulties afflicting North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, nearly one million people applied for asylum in the EU.
‘Besides the less remote Iberian Peninsula, the Center for Fundamental Rights now runs a dedicated operation aimed towards the oft-neglected south of the Western hemisphere, amounting to twenty-two countries, nine time zones, two languages—and countless parties, think tanks, civic groups, and allies spread from the borderland Rio Grande down to the Tierra del Fuego archipelago. This empire of actionable ideas will grow by persuasion rather than force, not as a sovereign entity but as a loose constellation of like-minded partners comparing notes on their parallel journeys to power.’
Russia held its first three-day-long presidential election between 15–17 March 2024; 7 May marked the previous cabinet’s last day in office. The new appointments in the Russian cabinet are significant not only because they mark the Kremlin’s apparent preparation for a long war, but also because they provide a fresh insight into the power games played in Moscow.
While talking at the Sedona Forum, US Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman called Hungary’s pro-peace approach to the Russo-Ukrainian war ‘a proposal for capitulation’. In response to him, the political director for the Prime Minister of Hungary Balázs Orbán asked: ‘Has the US strategy really been that effective over the past two years?’
‘Throughout the West today…there is a mania for forgetting our civilizational past as an intolerable moral burden. Western elites regard migrants, sexual minorities, and other outsiders as bearers of ‘‘the richness of cultural diversity’’, but do not see the culturally diverse minorities already within Europe itself in the same way.’