Foreign Minister Szijjártó said Israel has the right to take action over the brutal Hamas attack, underlining that ‘Israel does indeed have a right to self-defence.’ At the same time, the minister also noted that most countries want to avoid the escalation of the fight against terrorism into an interstate war resulting in ‘a real global security tragedy’.
Within just a few days, the Commission has gone from announcing a complete suspension of aid to the Palestinians to tripling humanitarian aid to them. No wonder a special summit was soon needed to coordinate EU communication on the conflict in Israel.
It is quite apparent that from Afghanistan to Ukraine, from Israel to North Korea, the world is worse off than it was when Donald Trump occupied the White House. Can all this really be just by mere chance?
‘Israel does recognize who were the true friends and Hungary has proved for a long period of time under Viktor Orbán’s leadership that—despite the pressure from larger and possibly more powerful European countries—it can stand alone at times and will not conform with this general line that of “both sides are to blame, both sides are wrong, and let them find the solution”. Hungary understands without any doubt who the murderers are and who the victims are.’
‘According to recent polls, neither United Right nor Civic Platform will be able to form a government on its own…Donald Tusk’s situation seems easier in that he may have a realistic chance of including both the aforementioned Lewica and the Third Way alliance in the future governing coalition. This does not mean, however, that it would be easy for him to govern with these parties, and indeed such multi-party coalitions—let us not forget that the KO is itself an alliance—are often not very stable and long-lived.’
‘All things being equal, the roots to the actual deadly conflict are profound, as already mentioned. Yet it does not help the cause of peace to keep doing business with Iran, just as the United States has done under the Obama administration and is still doing under the present one.’
As an article by Premier Christian highlighted, for Armenians, leaving Nagorno-Karabakh is not just a geographical relocation, but also the act of severing ties with their deeply engrained cultural and religious heritage.
Hungary supports all initiatives for maintaining dialogue aimed at de-escalating the conflict and finding a peaceful resolution, Minister Bóka told the French weekly Le Point in an interview, referring to the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Third Danube Institute Geopolitical Summit took place last week in the Castle District of Budapest, with such illustrious guests sharing their insights as former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, former Czech President Václav Klaus, Head of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Hungarians Abroad Zsolt Németh, and Lewis Libby, researcher at the Hudson Institute and advisor to former US President George W. Bush.
Besides supporting EU’s EDIRPA and ASAP initiatives, Hungary has also been participating in joint capacity building and procurement programmes with France and Germany.
The Foreign Minister stressed the importance of Azeri-Hungarian cooperation, which he claims has greatly helped Hungary in energy security in the past decade, and called on Brussels to ‘do more than nudging’ to help member states diversify their energy sources.
In a statement issued today, the Fidesz EP group has announced its support for the new common procurement act (EDIRPA) proposed in the European Parliament. The act would allocate €300 million in funds to ‘incentivise the joint procurement of urgent and critical defence products needed in the context of the response to Russia’s war on Ukraine.’
The incompetence of the European Commission has caused enormous damage to the European farmer society. The huge quantity and uncontrolled flow of low-quality Ukrainian grain into the EU may even challenge the integrity of the common market.
‘The rapport between the governments of the world and Iran cannot be limited to the financial sector; they must address Iran’s brutal crackdowns of its own population, its sponsorship of global terrorism, its setting up a parallel-state within Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, its militia forces in Iraq, which with the assistance of the Badr Organization occupy government posts imposing their sharia-based tenets, and its delivery of weapons to Russia to use against Ukraine.’
The former Minister of the Interior publicly shared Bible verses, calling into question her church deciding to to endorse a gay pride parade. For this, she was charged with ‘agitation against a minority group’. Despite having been acquitted in March 2022, the zealous prosecution appealed and now she will be back on trial at the end of the month.
Lajos Ódor, who was appointed Prime Minister by the President of Slovakia in May in the midst of a political crisis, made some statements in a public discussion at a festival which suggested that Viktor Orbán is isolated on the world stage in his views. Fidesz MP Tamás Menczer reacted in a poignant Facebook post.
Former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz told the audience in Esztergom that he had a great relationship with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán during his time in public office. The two statesmen were among the first to raise concerns about the incoming wave of migration into Europe back in 2015. Meanwhile, Michael Knowles took a strong stance against transgenderism and talked at length about the difference between the liberal and conservative understanding of freedom.
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.
The embassies of the United States, Germany, Slovakia, and 35 other nations have put out a joint statement ahead of the Budapest Pride March, condemning the Hungarian government for allegedly not protecting the rights of LGBTQ people in the country. US Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman was also present at the March, where also gave yet another critical speech.
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.
At a joint press conference held with his Slovak counterpart in Budapest, Minister Szijjártó said both Slovakia and Hungary insist that the composition of the energy mix of member states should remain a national competence.
The MCC Budapest Peace Forum featured 70 speakers, 35 foreign experts from 20 different countries. Academics, public figures, and famed experts all took a stand for the importance of peace, and shone a light on the consequences of war from the different aspects of their respective expertise.
Highly respected experts, such as former Constitutional Court Justice István Stumpf, Gadi Taub, Senior Lecturer at the Federmann School of public policy from Israel, and James Allen of the University of Queensland in Australia, shared their views on the controversial concept of ‘rule of law’. Their lectures were followed by a discussion between State Secretary for European Affairs János Bóka and Ákos Bence Gát, head of foreign affairs at the Danube Institute.
According to Charap, as the dragging on of the war is not in the interest of either the West or Ukraine, there is need to look for another way of approaching the conflict. While an actual peace treaty between the two sides that invested so much into this conflict might look unlikely, negotiations are nevertheless possible—and the West should facilitate these negotiations.
Following the results of the 2022 parliamentary election, the American NGO Freedom House decided to downgrade Hungary’s controversial ‘democracy index’ from last year’s report. Meanwhile, Poland’s and Ukraine’s have been increased.
The Political Director of the Prime Minister, Balázs Orbán has been appointed to oversee the Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade (IFAT), which is also changing its name back to the pre-2014 one of Hungarian Institute of International Affairs (HIIA). The new president of the organisation will be Gladden J. Pappin.
Last year, the US terminated the 1979 double taxation avoidance agreement with Hungary. According to Szijjártó, the USG took this step in response to the Hungarian government not giving its consent to the introduction of the global minimum tax.
Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, has recently held talks with his Swedish counterpart, Tobias Billström, in Stockholm.
In the absence of a peace treaty with Russia, Japan has not yet practically ended WWII—and now it is acutely feeling the ominous signs of another global conflict. The island nation is trying to take control of its destiny under the shadow of today’s superpower militarisation and the war in Ukraine.
Germany became one of the most influential countries not just within the EU but in the whole world in the past few decades. In this regard, we are going to examine the possible impacts of the German government’s change on Hungary.
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.