Hungarian government: US ambassador needed – Weekly press briefing

The government has managed to carry out its farmland sales scheme dubbed Land to Farmers in a way that the Constitutional Court has declared lawful and constitutional, government office chief János Lázár said on Thursday. US-Hungary ties would be greatly helped if America appointed an ambassador to Hungary, he said.

Speaking at his weekly press briefing, Lázár said US charge d’affaires David Kostelancik’s recent remarks concerning press freedom in Hungary were “a lot of nonsense”.

“More US diplomats who speak Hungarian are needed,” Lázár said,

insisting that “if they spoke our language they would see that hundreds of articles criticising the government are published daily.” He added it was “far from the case2 that criticism of the government was missing from the Hungarian press.

Soros has ensured financing for his plan

US billionaire George Soros has guaranteed the conditions for financing his plan to import migrants into Europe, having donated a large portion of his wealth to his foundations, Lázár said on Thursday.

Lázár said:

“This money will be put to work everywhere in the whole of Europe, and it will support those civil communities and parties that want to open up Europe’s borders and that want to organise immigration.”

He said central European countries were being weighed down by huge pressures due to immigration, referring to the European Parliament Committee on Home Affairs, Citizenship and Justice’s (LIBE) decision to approve a draft text on modifying the Dublin Regulation. The reforms are aimed at speeding up asylum procedures and ensuring a more equal distribution of the burden of migration among member states. Lazar said the decision would open up the possibility for a permanent mechanism for distributing migrants.

Time for CEU to ‘make up its mind’

It is time for Budapest’s Central European University (CEU) to “make up its mind about what it wants done” in connection with Hungary’s higher education law,

the government office chief said.

Lázár said the CEU had “spent the whole summer” asking for the deadline for foreign universities to comply with the higher education law to be extended, but when parliament extended it “we are once again seeing political protests”.

“This isn’t fair,” Lázár said.

Lawmakers amended Hungary’s higher education law to extend the deadline for foreign universities and colleges operating in the country to meet the law’s criteria to January 1, 2019.

The government expects everyone to meet the law’s criteria within the allotted time, Lázár said.