‘Could Biden’s token [of shaking hands only with Orbán when arriving for the NATO group photo in Vilnius], as some experts suspect, have been an invitation to the Hungarian government to hop on board the US geopolitical bandwagon and forget the Chinese and Russian ones?’
After the victorious election, the prime minister made it clear that the Russian aggression against Ukraine was forcing us to partially revise our strategy in foreign affairs, adjusting it to the changed circumstances. It is hardly surprising, then, that proposals and ideas of a strategic nature have increasingly claimed centre stage at in-camera government sessions and in public forums alike.
Given the country profile of Hungary, it is a refreshing achievement that it has moved up a league to Moderate Innovators, even though its performance is 70.4 per cent of the EU average, below the category average, and its performance growth is also slower than the EU average.
Another summit of the intergovernmental cooperation between Austria, Hungary, and Serbia took place on 7 July in Vienna, Austria. Apart from the heads of state and government, the three nations’ ministers of foreign affairs, and domestic and law enforcement leaders also took part in the conference, held at the Austrian Chancellor’s residence. The Vienna Summit was organised in the wake of Hungary and Poland officially objecting to the migration package at the European Commission’s 30 June session.
The PM’s political director stated that as opposed to how the European asylum system is currently working, Hungary’s position is that no one who is not eligible for legal entry should be allowed into the territory of Europe and the Schengen area. Those wishing to submit an asylum application should do so outside the Schengen area, and only those entitled to refugee status should be allowed to enter.
On 12 July, one day after the correction issued by the Ukrainian foreign ministry, some Ukrainian media, including the English language Kyiv Independent, were still posting articles about WizzAir having removed ‘a Ukrainian war veteran’ from its flight. Obviously, the fake news was too conveniently painting a negative picture of Hungary to be just let go by the unapologetically anti-Hungarian Ukrainian press.
Jewish-Hungarian MP from the Horthy era Béla Fábián was held as a POW in Russia in World War i, and was taken to a concentration camp in World War II. He became an avid critic of the Hungarian Communist Party while living in exile in the 20th century, for which the Kádár regime subjected him to a smear campaign, claiming that he actually served as a ‘kapo’, a prisoner-turned-guard in his camp. Here’s the story of the extraordinary life of a special man.
With the recent large-scale build-up of the national defence industry, Hungary is not only ensuring its own military equipment supply, but also contributing to the development of European defence industrial capabilities and thus enhancing the EU’s security.
Gergely Gulyás explained that since the previous cabinet took office in 2018, numerous changes have occurred in world politics and the economy, and the government elected in 2022 had to face completely different challenges than it did four years earlier.
Brussels is requesting an additional €98 billion in contributions from member states. Hungary does not approve of this contribution. As Gulyás pointed out, this request raises the question: how have Ukraine and the EU spent their funds so far? ‘Where is the money?,’ he asked. He also posed the same question to Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony, who is embroiled in a campaign finance scandal while he is also claiming that his city is nearing bankruptcy.
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.
