Foreign Ministry Profile To Be Raised, Says Navracsics
Budapest, June 2 (MTI) – Hungary’s foreign ministry, which is to deal with external economic affairs, will raise its profile, the ministry’s incoming head, Tibor Navracsics, said in an interview with public radio today.
Navracsics says he expects to lead the ministry temporarily until being nominated as a European commissioner. He told Kossuth Radio that until now the national economy ministry and the cabinet office had shared responsibility for external economic affairs. Now the foreign ministry will take on that responsibility as well and would become stronger as a result, he added.
He said the task of the foreign minister would be to arrange Hungary’s foreign relations as well as representing the country, and this may involve both cooperation and conflict. Hopefully, in most areas it will be possible to form cooperation, he said, but protecting Hungarian interests may involve conflict, too.
Navracsics said he had undertaken to head the ministry for four years but Prime Minister Viktor Orban had expressed his intention to nominate him to become Hungary’s next European commissioner.
“In politics the future is always uncertain,” he said, but for the time being he would concentrate on the tasks of foreign minister, he added.
Navracsics, the deputy prime minister who also headed the ministry of public administration and justice in Orban’s second term, said that the reform of the new public administration system was now complete. He said it had been necessary to introduce a ministry which focused on public administration since there had been a strong need to renew the system. Whereas the network of so-called government windows — a one-stop shop for citizens arranging their affairs — had yet to be completed, this was by now simply an IT task, he added.
He noted the new criminal code, civil code, constitution and the related cardinal laws, showing that “amid democratic circumstances, Hungary has never had such intensive lawmaking,” thereby renewing the whole of the Hungarian legal system.
In connection with the European parliamentary election, he said Fidesz had notched up a massive victory in Hungary. Here it was not that case that extremists had made a breakthrough, he said.
Photo: fidesz.hu
Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters