Deputy Prime Minister: Hungarian national pride key to survival

The Hungarian nation will only survive if all of its members feel proud to be a part of it, Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén said handing out state awards on Friday ahead of the March 15 national holiday commemorating Hungary’s 1848 revolution.

A nation and a community will only have a future if its members feel that their compatriots “do great things”, the deputy PM in charge of Hungarian communities abroad, church policy and national and ethnic minorities, said. “This is especially true for a nation with a small population like the Hungarian nation,” he added.

“We can be proud of the scientists and artists who lived throughout our history, but those who excel in their own fields are now key to survival for the nation as a whole,” Semjén said.

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Semjén handed out the Officer’s Cross and the Knight’s Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit as well as the Hungarian Golden Cross of Merit, the Hungarian Silver Cross of Merit and the Hungarian Bronze Cross of Merit on behalf of the president at the ceremony.

Later the prime minister’s chief of staff said at the award-giving ceremony marking Hungary’s March 15 national holiday that “when surrounded by the clamour of war, we must serve the cause of peace”.

In his speech, Gergely Gulyás noted the importance of living in peace “when in a neighbouring country peace was destroyed overnight”.