Orbán cabinet says Hungary’s EU presidency has been “strong, active, strategic”
Hungary’s presidency of the Council of the European Union was a “distinctive, active and strategic” presidency, János Bóka, the EU affairs minister, said late on Monday.
“The presidency was distinctive because we aimed to put a decisive and strong Europe policy into practice,” Bóka said in a video message on Facebook. He said the presidency had been active because of the series of initiatives Hungary had undertaken over the six-month period. Further, the Hungarian presidency “was strategic because we aimed to provide strategic guidance to the European Union’s institutions for the next five-year institutional cycle,” Bóka said.
Hungary’s EU presidency in figures
Boglárka Bólya, Ministerial Commissioner for Training, Personnel Coordination and Social Relations during the EU Presidency, summed up the past six months:
- 39 formal Council meetings and 52 high-level meetings took place in Brussels.
- 14 informal meetings were chaired by Hungarian ministers in Budapest and 1204 working group meetings were chaired by Hungarian experts.
- 93 Presidency events were held in Brussels and 180 in Hungary.
- More than 20,000 guests were welcomed at events in Hungary.
- Hungary hosted the 5th European Political Community (EPC) Summit, which is considered the largest diplomatic event ever held in the country, and took steps towards the institutionalisation of the EPC. At the informal European Council in November, the leaders of the Member States adopted the Budapest Declaration, which sets out the European Union’s competitiveness priorities for many years to come.
- It is an achievement of historic proportions that Romania and Bulgaria have become full members of the Schengen area.
- It also gave new impetus to the enlargement process in the Western Balkans, with the first informal meeting of demography ministers. As we wrote earlier, Hungarian EU Presidency makes milestone progress on enlargement for Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania
- Progress has been made on all the priorities set and he underlined the work done to promote Jewish life.
Fidesz propaganda has been “strong, active, strategic”. The Hungarian EU presidency was a six month pause in real policy making as the membership isolated Orban and wanted nothing to do with him. Now Poland will take over which is THE country to rally the EU to protect itself from the existential threat that war mongering expansionist Russia poses.