New momentum in Hungary-US relations: Defence, diplomacy, and agriculture in focus

Peace will be beneficial especially if Europe, similarly to Hungary, finds common ground with the US, the head of the Prime Minister’s Office said at the meeting of the Hungarian Atlantic Council (MAT) late on Thursday.

Receiving the body’s Antall József Prize for supporting the Transatlantic concept and aiding the council’s work, Gergely Gulyás told the body’s general assembly that the change of government in the US had been a “relief” for Hungary as the previous Democrat administration had been “expressly unfriendly”.

He said “the US does not want to protect Europe” and expects the bloc to develop its defence capabilities “which have been neglected for decades”. Meanwhile, referring to József Antall, Hungary’s first prime minister after the fall of communism, Gulyás said he worked at a time when “respect was the ruling tone of public life … that has ceased, it is no more”. “That is a serious hit to democracy,” he said.

Lauding Gulyás, Zsolt Németh, the head of parliament’s foreign policy committee and the MAT vice-president, said the minister had a “nationalist, Christian, conservative and protestant set of values” and was “an operative problem-solver” who played a role in “protecting the victims of the events of 2006, creating the Fundamental Law, or fostering Hungary’s crucial relations with German-speaking states.”

Ministry: Hungary-US agricultural ties given new momentum

The University of Debrecen and South Dakota State University have signed an agreement on offering a dual-degree programme in precision agricultural engineering, the agriculture ministry said on Friday. The agreement “goes well beyond” the formal partnership between the two institutions, and will open a new chapter in Hungarian-US professional relations, Oszkár Ökrös, a deputy state secretary at the ministry, said.