conference

Hungary registers 160 events at conferences on EU future

Out of the 2,000 events in a series of upcoming conferences on the future of the European Union Hungary has registered 160, more than any other countries except Germany and Italy, the justice minister said on Facebook on Monday.

In her post, Judit Varga said that “as the statistics show, the Hungarian people are committed to the future of Europe”, adding that “in such cases, it may be difficult for those who unfairly accuse Hungary of taking the path of the United Kingdom with Poland”.

“We are working hard and remain active in the dialogue and common reflection because we want to live in a Europe that is true to its own intellectual and cultural heritage. Where they do not make a mockery of national commitment and do not relativise the concept of family,” Varga wrote.

“The current consultation cannot be complete without the opinion of Hungarians. Now is the time to finally send a direct message to Brussels, whether it is about migration, family or the protection of our common values,” she added.

read also – Minister Varga: EU cannot dictate how Hungarians should educate their children

Read alsoOrbán: Spiritual and political differences mounting between central Europe and western Europeans

September 20, 2021

Brussels supports not only illegal migration but increased use of drugs, says Hungarian minister in Kyoto

Illegal migration and increasing drug consumption are two serious global security challenges linked to organised crime, and the European Union’s measures are “not effective enough”, the Hungarian foreign minister said in Kyoto, where he attended the 14th UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, on Monday.

Organized with the support of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Crime Congress represents the world’s largest gathering of governments, international and regional organizations, civil society, experts and scholars focusing on crime prevention and criminal justice. The Congresses have been held every five years since 1955 in different parts of the world, dealing with a vast array of topics. They have made considerable impact in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice and influenced national and international policies and professional practices.

The Kyoto Congress was adapted to adhere to strict health and safety standards while enabling high-level and diverse participation, with a limited in-person component and most of the 5,600 participants joining virtually through a new, dedicated event platform.

“The global pandemic has made this Congress more relevant than any other Congress because the global pandemic has started as a health problem and ended up being a human crisis; an economic, and social crisis,”

said the UNODC Executive Director Ghada Waly.

“This economic and social crisis has caused increased fragility and increased risks of crime. So, when you have increased risks of crime, of corruption, of terrorism, then a Crime Congress on the prevention of crime and the rule of law becomes all the more relevant.”

In the Kyoto Declaration adopted earlier on Sunday (7 Mar), governments agreed concrete actions to advance responses addressing crime prevention, criminal justice, rule of law and international cooperation. Member States will take commitments forward at the 30th session of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) in Vienna in May.

Speaking to MTI, Péter Szijjártó said that the coronavirus pandemic had created new global security challenges, which, if left untackled, would generate further problems.

He said illegal migration posed a security and cultural threat to Europe and carried a health risk of rapid transmission of Covid-19. Illegal migration is helped by organised crime since migrants “use the services of people smuggling rings often helped by NGOs”, Szijjártó said.

As regards drugs, Szijjártó said that “unfortunately, what we see is that

Brussels supports not only illegal migration but an increased use of drugs”,

adding that “cannabis has recently been reclassified in the UN as an allegedly non-hazardous substance”.

The Hungarian government opposed that step and the European Commission in response launched an infringement procedure against the country rather than increase its efforts to cut drug abuse.

Read alsoEnormous drug bust in Budapest – VIDEO

March 8, 2021

New Hungarian Panel on Climate Change to compile latest national research results

The newly set-up Hungarian Panel on Climate Change (HuPCC) will compile Hungarian aspects of new knowledge and research results on climate change and it plans to hold its first scientific conference in April, the body’s leaders said on Tuesday.

HuPCC has been set up as a national scientific advisory forum for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC).

Deputy leader Diána Ürge-Vorsatz told an online press conference that since the IPCC was set up 30 years ago, demand has developed in Hungary for a similar organisation that compiles the results of work carried out in the country in this field.

HuPCC leader László Szekér said the

first Hungarian scientific conference on climate change between April 12 and 15 will represent the first interdisciplinary professional dialogue in Hungary.

HuPCC said in a statement that its aim was to present a detailed assessment of the current situation and a vision for the future based on scientific knowledge.

Climate concerns still on public’s mind during pandemic

Read alsoThe future of Hungarian weather: cold blasts and disappearing lakes

February 24, 2021

3rd Budapest Energy Summit international conference goes virtual today

Hungary has made significant progress in the area of energy diversification, the minister of foreign affairs and trade said on Tuesday, opening the third Budapest Energy Summit international conference.

Péter Szijjártó said energy supplies were always a critical issue in central Europe, and the countries of the region were making significant progress to diversify their energy resources. Energy supplies are also a matter of national security in the region, he added.

Infrastructure is historically defined, with East-West networks being more developed than North-South networks, an issue that needs to be addressed, he said.

Liquefied gas will be part of Hungary’s energy mix as the LNG terminal in Krk, in Croatia, comes online in January,

he said, adding that Hungary has reserved an annual 1 billion cubic metres of LNG from this terminal starting in January 2021, enabling the country to sign a long-term gas supply contract with Shell which does not involve Russian sources, he said.

Szijjártó also said that

the Paks 2 nuclear power station upgrade was progressing well.

The government is dedicated to clean, efficient and modern energy supplies, and rejects negative discrimination against nuclear energy, he added. Without nuclear energy, it would be impossible to meet the CO2 emissions targets, he said.

Hungary is dedicated to the European Union’s targets and is one of 21 countries that has increased economic output while cutting CO2 emissions in the past ten years, Szijjártó said.

Progress has also been made in securing electricity supplies, with two new Slovak interconnectors coming online next year and the final phase of the construction of a Slovenia-Hungary interconnector already under way, he added.

Construction of a 50 km pipeline has started on the Serbian-Hungarian border which will give access to the southern gas corridor, including Azerbaijani, central Asian gas and Greek LNG gas, he said.

The Budapest Energy Summit will go virtual this year, live streaming here!

New history books feature Hun approach instead of Finno-Ugric one

huns hungary history illustration A_magyarok_megérkezése_az_új_hazába

The new National Core Curriculum was accepted in January, and the materials were rewritten and changed accordingly within months. Now fifth and ninth graders are learning from new history books, or at least the demo version of them.

There has been an intense debate about the new history textbooks and their content, and that might be one of the reasons why the new books are only available in a demo version to teachers exclusively, reported Index.

Nóra Berend, who is a professor at the University of Cambridge, has reviewed one of the textbooks in an article on the Society of History Teachers’ website, in which she says, that the book is “not to teach, but to ideologically form in a direction that is opposite of both democracy and healthy intellectual development.”

Berend points out that the textbook, which was written by Péter Gróf and György Szabados,

attaches greater importance to the Hungarians and their fictional ancestors than in reality,
praises them for imaginary achievements, although period Western yearbooks make it clear that the “ancestors” of Hungarians were robber mercenaries, who would make a contract with anyone for the right amount of money,
portrays monopoly as a better political system than democracy,
emphasises the truth and realness of Christianity.

According to Telex, those are not the only reasons why the new textbooks are criticising. They are also under fire for presenting the Finno-Ugric language kinship as only one of the theories, and for accepting the idea of Hun-Hungarian continuity and the theory of double conquest.

The Association of History Teachers held a conference because of the tensions regarding the new textbooks. Still, only György Szabados accepted his invite, and as one of the authors of the book, he kept defending his work. “The Hungarian prehistory of the past decades has been dominated by Finno-Ugric theory, from which the field must be liberated,” said the employee of the Hungarian Research Institute.

The Hungarian Research Institute was established in the spirit of Minister Miklós Kásler, who is personally obsessed with Hungary’s prehistory and Hun origins, and the textbooks clearly reflect these views. Telex has reported in detail about the conference, where the atmosphere was very tense, and the topic at hand was said to be highly politicised.

Read alsoThe biggest Hungarian battles of history

Read alsoECJ: Hungarian law on higher education breaches EU law – UPDATE

October 13, 2020

IV International Conference Fertilizers 2021: CEE, Baltic and Balkans will take place in Budapest

Challenging times all over the world have led to transformation of the business events industry for the benefit and the health of the public. However, feedback from many companies indicates that the fertilizer community still desperately needs face-to-face industry events. Therefore, WorldFertilizerMarket (Chem-Courier Agency) has decided to launch the registration for the annual conference dedicated to the European fertilizer market.

The 4th International Conference Fertilizers 2021: Eastern Europe, Baltic States & Balkans will take place in Budapest, Hungary, on 27-29 January 2021 and will be the next step in the sequence of the successful events in Athens, Greece; Bucharest, Romania; and Warsaw, Poland. The audience of our conferences is growing, and we hope to attract even more companies, including large-scale farmers, retailers, distributors, wholesalers and producers operating in the area in focus, to provide our regular and new attendees and partners with wider opportunities.

The conference covers the fertilizer markets of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic states, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia and Greece.

Watching the global fertilizer and raw material markets trends closely, we analyse changes in the region in a year. The conference will address such industry issues as the climate change, raw material supply disruptions and new regulations in an attempt to find possible solutions to them.

The conference attendees will have a chance to get insight into analytics and case studies from market players and WFM experts (Chem-Courier Information Agency), discuss the burning issues and negotiate with business partners.

The conference highlights:

The markets for nitrogen, phosphorus and potash fertilizers
The fertilizer consumption in the EEBB region
Stabilised nitrogen fertilizers and water-soluble fertilizers
The benchmark price in the region
Transport and logistics.

Look at agenda

The conference audience:

Producers of staple and specialty fertilizers
International and regional traders
Importing companies
Large agricultural businesses
Regional distributors and wholesalers
Carriers

Delegate List 2020

To sign up for the conference, click on the link below:

Application form
Terms of participation

For additional information please contact the conference organizing team by email co**@wf***********.com or by phone: +38 056 370 12 04 (Ukraine) and +7 499 346 03 42 (Russia).

July 13, 2020

Hungary AI strategy ready, says minister

Hungary has prepared its Artificial Intelligence Strategy which addresses technical and human-sciences issues emerging from the evolution of AI, the innovation and technology minister said at Pannon University, in Veszprém, on Monday evening.

Artificial Intelligence raises a number of moral and social questions, one of which is to what extent will it overwhelm natural intelligence, László Palkovics said.

AI is emerging as part of the creative industry, and this raises the question of whether it should be considered a threat or an opportunity, the minister said.

“AI allows people to spend time on things with which they can create more value-added,” he said.

AI can be used in many areas from face recognition, health checks, polygraph tests, X-rays, noise indication of agricultural machine defects and self-driving vehicles to composing music and writing poems, he said.

Hungarian software tells the probability of death

Talking about AI’s use in transport, Palkovics said it would help to eliminate human error and spare time and fuel.

Further, Palkovics said AI will also become widely used in some professions and in state services.

“By 2030, Artificial Intelligence is expected to have contributed 14 percent, or about 7,000 billion forints (EUR 20.9bn), to [the country’s] GDP,” the minister said.

The Artificial Intelligence Strategy has been prepared by more than 200 institutions and companies, he said. It covers changes to data laws, the creation of a national laboratory, incentives for companies, research and development, training, infrastructure development and automatised administration in areas such as health care, as well as ethical and legal issues to be addressed.

Once approved by the government, the strategy will be posted on its kormany.hu website, Palkovics said.

Read alsoRobots to protect Hungary’s borders?

February 18, 2020

Central bank governor Matolcsy calls for euro zone reform at Lámfalussy Lectures

Central bank governor György Matolcsy called for the reform of the euro zone and a “rethink” of the Maastricht criteria in a presentation delivered at the bank’s annual Lámfalussy Lectures conference on Monday.

The event this year focuses on sustainable convergence, Matolcsy said. He called on members of the European community to start a dialogue on reforming the euro zone and added that Hungary had already prepared its programme.

Hungary has been on a path of sustainable convergence since 2013, with economic growth at an average 3.8 percent, 2 percentage points above the euro zone average, he said. GDP per capita is at 73 percent of the European Union average and public debt is expected to drop below 60 percent of GDP by 2022, he added.

Next to the positive changes, Hungary needs new reforms in competitiveness which also requires a dialogue with international partners, he said.

Twenty years after the introduction of the euro, some basic conditions have still not been fulfilled, and a new dialogue is needed on ways to reform the euro zone, Matolcsy said. The thirtieth anniversary of the Maastricht Treaty in 2022 will provide an excellent opportunity for reform, he added.

The first ten years of the euro zone were successful but since the global financial crisis, numerous problems and unresolved issues have developed, he said.

At a preceding event of the conference on Sunday, the National Bank of Hungary awarded Peter Praet, former Chief Economist of the European Central Bank with the Lamfalussy Prize.

The Sándor Lámfalussy Prize recognises “outstanding financial and economic professionals who performed internationally acclaimed professional work, scientific publications or educational work that have a major long-term impact on the development of the Hungarian and international monetary policy, economics and the professional community”.

January 20, 2020

Hungary will not allow churches to be turned into malls, mosques, says deputy PM

Hungary will not allow churches to be turned into shopping malls or mosques, Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén told an international conference on persecuted Christians on Tuesday.

Every effort will be made to protect Christian civilisation and all the help will be provided to Christians in the east who suffer the most difficult persecution, he added.

Semjén said the persecution of Christians was manifested in more sophisticated and also more brutal forms and it was a mission to fight against both.

International conference on persecuted Christians – Orbán: Europe can only be saved by returning to Christianity

Hungary has declared in its constitution that the protection of Christian civilisation was the duty of all state bodies.

The constitution also made it clear that marriage was the alliance between a man and a woman and that life must be protected already from the time of conception, he added.

Over the past 10 years, some three thousand churches have been revamped and built in Hungary, he said.

basilicas, Esztergom, Hungary, religion, buildings

Read alsoFour incredible basilicas you need to see in Hungary – PHOTOS

November 27, 2019

International conference on persecuted Christians – Orbán: Europe can only be saved by returning to Christianity

Europe can only be saved if it “returns to the source of its real values: its Christian identity”, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Tuesday at the opening of an international conference on persecuted Christians.

“Those we are helping now can give us the greatest help in saving Europe,” the prime minister said in his speech. “We are giving persecuted Christians what they need: homes, hospitals, and schools, and we receive in return what Europe needs most: a Christian faith, love and perseverance.”

“The Hungarian people and their government believe that Christian virtues provide peace and happiness to those who practise them,”

Orbán said, noting that protecting Hungary’s constitutional identity and Christian culture was an obligation for each state agency under Hungary’s fundamental law. “This legacy obliges us to protect Christian communities persecuted across the world as far as we are able,” he said.

Orbán noted that the first Hungarian tribes arrived in the Carpathian Basin 1,100 years ago but many other groups had come and gone before them. “To this day Hungarians are curious as to why we were the ones to survive,” the prime minister said. “According to the most widely accepted answer, our military capabilities and vigour would not have been enough, so the key to our survival was our conversion to Christianity.”

“There are some who see this as primarily a diplomatic feat or one of state organisation, and it was exactly those things, but first and foremost it was a spiritual rebirth and a real conversion,” Orbán said.

“The Hungarian people and their government believe that Christianity can help peoples and nations survive, just as it had happened with us,” he added.

“Our first Christian king was more than just a remarkable ruler,” Orbán said, adding that King St. Stephen had been a visionary who had given Hungarians guidance and a “spiritual and political compass”.

The prime minister said Hungary was right to stand up for Christianity, arguing that “goodness inspires goodness” and Hungarians’ commitment to helping persecuted Christians “breeds courage”. “Our example can have a far reach,” he said. “Actions can free those who are crippled and restore faith in personal action.”

Orbán said the question may arise whether there was already enough to be done about anti-Christian sentiment in Europe and if there was even a need to provide help to other continents. “The troubles of Christianity in Europe and the persecution of Christians in other places cannot be separated from one another,” he argued.

“Europe is quiet,” Orbán said. “A mysterious force shuts the mouths of European politicians and cripples their arms.” He said the issue of Christian persecution could only be considered a human rights issue in Europe, insisting that “Christians are not allowed to be mentioned on their own, only together with other groups that are being persecuted for their faiths.” The persecution of Christians “is therefore folded into the diverse family of persecuted religious groups”, he added.

Read alsoBudapest is safer and more livable than London

The prime minister said that while religious persecution should not be underestimated, those who treated the persecution of Christians solely as a humanitarian problem failed to mention the most important thing. “It’s not just the people and the communities but also the culture as a whole that is being subjected to an organised and comprehensive attack,” he said. “Even in the land of our culture, our civilisation, the most successful Christian civilisation to date: Europe.” He said this attack was being carried out through “the replacement of the population, immigration, stigmatisation, insults and the muzzle of political correctness”.

Orbán said there were many “good and true Christian politicians” in Europe today but they were stymied from openly stating their views due to a mix of constant coalition negotiations and succumbing to the power relations of Europe’s media. Hungary, he said, was blessed with political stability, a public against migration, and a majority that demanded the protection of Christian culture.

He said

Hungarian politics started from the position that “we Christians have the right to protect our culture and way of life”.

Orbán said that unlike many politicians elsewhere in Europe, “we believe people should be encouraged to live and thrive where their ancestors have lived for centuries. So the Hungary Helps scheme is about rebuilding schools, hospitals and dwellings in troubled parts of the world and providing young people with an education at Hungarian universities, he said.

He said Europeans were wrong to think that the persecution of Christians could never take place in their own country. He said that

even though Europe had suffered at the hands of terrorists several times, “many Islamic State soldiers” had come from western European countries while “Islamic masses” had migrated to Europe illegally and unchecked.

Demographic forecasts indicate that the religious and cultural proportions in some European countries will change rapidly, he said, adding that Europe could only be “saved” by re-establishing its Christian identity.

Read alsoSad news: Hungary’s population decline increases

November 26, 2019

Eurasia Forum held in Budapest – UPDATE

Cooperation between East and West, with Hungary as a bridgehead, is in the country’s interest, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said at the on Wednesday.

Cooperation among Eurasian states is the best way to strengthen Europe and make it more competitive, he said.

“We live in a rapidly changing world,” Szijjártó said.

“Old systems are collapsing, new ones are forming.”

He said the US and China were the world’s most competitive nations while the European Union lagged behind them.

Szijjártó referred to America’s “patriotic government” and its America First political and economic doctrine. China, he added, was still expanding fast, with “remarkable” annual growth of around 6 percent. He said the EU had been late to respond to these challenges. Instead of intensifying competition, the EU has embarked on policies that restrict internal competition, and this acts as deadweight on its external competitiveness, he said. Central European countries have made structural reforms, including tax reform, that has strengthened their competitiveness, he said, adding that the EU wanted to harmonise tax regimes.

“We are sending a message to western European states that we’ll block all measures to harmonise taxes …” he said.

Meanwhile, Szijjártó said capital investment flows had changed direction as large eastern European companies bought up western European ones.

He said that once German companies had occupied the top echelons of investments in Hungary but now South Korean companies were in first place.

The minister said that Hungary has borne criticism for allowing a Russian company to construct the expansion of its Paks nuclear power plant, yet large companies from the US, France, Germany and Hungary are all involved in the joint project.

Eurasian cooperation is plainly in the EU’s interest, he said, adding that this strengthened technological and scientific development while boosting the bloc’s competitiveness.

György Matolcsy, the head of the National Bank of Hungary, said Eurasia was on the cusp of a new era as the Eurasian continent played a growing role on the world stage. Cooperation on the continent, he added, was becoming increasingly important.

“After the Atlantic era, we face a new era . in which infrastructure, education and economic knowledge are all vitally important,” he said. “Hungary is leading the way in building relations between East and West, and was the first European country to join the Belt and Road Initiative,” Matolcsy added.

Geneticists: Hungary’s first ruling dynasty Eurasian, not Finno-Ugric

October 30, 2019

Conference of Middle Eastern Christian church leaders starts in Budapest

Hungary is proving through its actions that a European Christian state can assume responsibility for all of the world’s Christian communities, the foreign minister said in Budapest on Tuesday.

The aiding of Middle Eastern Christian communities is set to be a key topic during Wednesday’s talks between Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Péter Szijjártó said at the opening of a conference of Middle Eastern Christian church leaders organised ahead of the high-level Hungarian-Russian summit.

The church leaders will also be meeting with Orbán and Putin, he said, adding that their talks could open the door to new projects in the Middle East.

The minister said there was a “consensus” in international political discourse that “the persecution of Christians is the last acceptable form of discrimination”. Szijjarto slammed what he called the international community’s refusal to address the issue of Christian persecution as “extreme hypocrisy”. He said the international community had a duty to take action for the protection of Christian communities.

Szijjártó said Christianity was the most persecuted religion in the world, with an average of 11 Christians killed every day for their faith.

Szijjártó noted that under the government’s Hungary Helps humanitarian aid programme, Hungary has so far spent 40 million dollars on rebuilding homes, churches and schools in the Middle East with a view to enabling Christians to remain in their homeland. Hungary has so far been able to help some 50,000 people through this scheme, the minister said, adding that even more people could be helped if the international community followed Hungary’s example.

He said

most of the church leaders attending the conference had come from Syria and Iraq.

Syria has been in a state of humanitarian crisis for more than eight years with more than 12 million people forced to leave their homes, he added.

Szijjártó said the international community should speak honestly about the situation in the Middle East and admit that it, too, was responsible for the ongoing crises in the region.

The “experiment of the ideology-based export of democracy has failed”, Szijjártó said, adding that the events of the Arab Spring had in many cases helped empower Islamist forces and the region had become a “cradle for the spread of extremist ideologies”. This brought about an intensification of the persecution of Christians and the emergence of crisis situations, triggering an exodus of illegal migrants towards Europe, he said.

Szijjártó said Europe had a fundamental interest in stability and peace in the Middle East.

“Europe’s security today begins with the security and stability of the Middle East and North Africa,” he said.

Help should be taken to where the trouble is “rather than bringing the trouble over here”, the minister said, urging the international community to devote greater attention to managing the root causes of mass migration.

Europe must provide all the political and economic assistance it can to the countries doing the most to preserve stability and prevent the spread of crises, he said.

Szijjártó urged the international community to shift its focus from “promoting migration” to helping displaced people return to their homelands by creating safe conditions there.

Orbán, Erdogan discuss bilateral, international affairs

October 29, 2019

International conference to focus on Otto von Habsburg and 1989

An international conference focusing on the role Otto von Habsburg played in the fall of communism in 1989 will be held in Budapest on October 10-11, the organiser said on Wednesday.

Otto von Habsburg was the last crown prince of the Austro-Hungary Monarchy until its dissolution in 1919. He served as President of the International Paneuropean Union between 1973 and 2004 and was an MEP for the Christian Social Union of Bavaria between 1979 and 1999. He was a co-initiator of Hungary’s 1989 Pan-European Picnic, one of a series of events that led to the dismantling of the Iron Curtain and the fall of communism.

The event is sponsored by the Habsburg Otto Foundation set up in 2017, Gergely Prohle, its director, told a press conference.

Otto von Habsburg always thought in terms of a modern European democratic world, but he also represented “the dynastic aspect, the dynastic experience”, Pröhle said.

“Otto von Habsburg was for many decades the only one who spoke in Hungarian in the European Parliament. This is proof that he drew the lesson from the monarchy’s history: he tried to shape his own policy so as to properly represent the interests of small nations. He can be considered a great Hungarian patriot,” Pröhle said.

The conference will be addressed by Zsolt Semjén, Hungary’s deputy prime minister in charge of Hungarian communities abroad, church policy and national and ethnic minorities, and Gergely Gulyás, the head of the Prime Minister’s Office. Speakers will further include Ingo Friedrich, former Vice-President of the European Parliament, Walburga Habsburg-Douglas, Vice-President of the Pan-European Union, and Eva Demmerle, a historian and writer, Otto von Habsburg’s political advisor.

The Habsburgs’ rise ensured by Hungarian forces – the Battle on the Marchfeld was fought 741 years ago

October 3, 2019

Foreign minister: Free trade in Hungary’s interest

An open global trade is in Hungary’s interest, Péter Szijjártó, the minister of foreign affairs and trade, told a conference in Budapest on Tuesday.

Speaking at the conference entitled Inspiring Hungary, Szijjártó revealed further details of a new investment incentive system Hungary is rolling out to attract more technology-oriented investments.

Hungary’s government will offer foreign investors cash subsidies up to 50 percent of project value in twelve counties, while cutting the ratio to 25 percent in three counties and 15 percent in another three counties, Szijjártó said.

He reiterated that the new system, launched on October 1, will not make job creation a condition of support to investment projects if they introduced new technologies.

The goal is no longer to create workplaces but to strengthen technological development and R+D, he said.

Szijjártó noted that 98 investments with a combined value of 4.3 billion euros had been undertaken in Hungary last year, creating 17,000 jobs. So far this year, investments worth 2.4 billion euros have been made in the country, with the biggest spenders coming from South Korea, he added.

South Korea’s Doosan starts building EUR 95m copper foil plant in Hungary

October 1, 2019

German foreign minister: German unity would not have been possible without Hungarians

It would have been impossible to restore German unity without the help of Hungarians in 1989, Germany’s foreign minister said on Tuesday in Berlin at the opening of a Hungary-Germany youth forum.

Heiko Maas, referring to the opening up of the Hungarian border thirty years ago on September 10, 1989, said that Hungarians had cleared the path to freedom for escaping East Germans. By opening the border,

“Hungarians punched the first brick out of the Berlin wall”.

This brick, he added, had become the foundation for today’s peaceful Europe based on solidarity.

The minister said that in the climate of today’s problems and disputes, “perhaps we should talk about this more from time to time”. He added that as a German and a European, he paid thanks to Hungarians for their steadfastness in 1989.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said at the forum that cooperation between Germany and central Europe “fundamentally determines the future of Europe”.

The events thirty years ago showed that Hungarians and Germans working together is “good for the whole of Europe”, he said.

Europe became stronger, wealthier and more peaceful with the accession of the eastern European states in 2004, and the region has gone on to be the engine of European growth, Szijjártó said. The volume of trade of Germany with the Visegrad Group exceeds German-French trade by 74 percent, he said, adding that cooperation between eastern Europe and Germany is key to European competitiveness and therefore determines the bloc’s position in the world, he said.

He called for European Union enlargement to integrate countries of the Western Balkans.

“Central Europeans, after fighting for our freedom, cast off the shackles of the communist dictatorships,” he said, noting that in 1991 four countries in the region set up the Visegrad Group “to struggle together to eradicate the remnants of dictatorship and strengthen each other in Euro-Atlantic integration.”

“Profound changes are taking place in world politics,” Szijjártó said.

“The global economy is rife with tension, attempts to curtail free trade are gaining ground, security threats are constant in the regions surrounding the European Union,” he said.

“As we face political, economic and security challenges, Hungarians and central Europeans are ready to take part in finding common solutions so that the European Union can be strong once again.”

He said the EU could be strong if its member states were strong. “Weakened nations that are unable to defend themselves, that have strayed far from their cultural and historical religious heritage, and a Europe based on such weakened nations, cannot be strong. We Hungarians are proud to have preserved our identity as one of the oldest states in the region,” he said.

Szijjártó urged the acceleration of EU enlargement, saying this would strengthen the bloc.

Integration of the Western Balkans, he added, must not wait until 2025 as this was important from the point of view of security.

“It is our common duty to return security to the people of Europe,” he said, warning that “hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, are moving towards Europe.”

Hungary is launching a 30 million euro aid program for Christians in the Middle East, jointly with the German Red Cross and is carrying out relief and reconstruction projects in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq to prevent people living there from fleeing, he said.

He said Hungarian-German friendship amounted to a strategic alliance. “We have been celebrating one of the most significant events in our history, with the linking of Hungarian sovereignty and the creation of German unity. We are proud that we could be a part of the reunification of Germany and Europe,” he said.

Meanwhile, at a commemoration held at the plaque marking the 1989 events on the wall of the German lower house of Parliament, the Bundestag, Hungarian House Speaker Laszlo Kover said Hungary’s independence and German unity were interlinked and constituted “a special ingredient of the future of a united, strong and democratic Europe”.

Kover noted that a twin of the plaque is placed on the wall of the Hungarian Parliament, reminding lawmakers and visitors “what we Hungarians and Germans did, in a demonstration of our friendship, for unity, independence and democracy.”

Bundestag chairman Wolfgang Schauble said at the event that the 1989 events were an example of Hungarian love of freedom. Hungarians “bravely and generously” gave a “crucial boost” to the events leading to German unity, he said.

“The time has come for Hungarian poets to seek new metaphors to describe the situation of their country, because Hungary is no longer a raft floating between East and West, but has a solid place in the heart of Europe, Schauble said.

Hungary took a huge risk by opening the borders for some 200,000 East German refugees in 1989, Schauble said, not only in view of the 80,000 Soviet soldiers occupying the country but also because the Soviet Union had clamped down on all previous freedom movements in the region, he said.

Hungarians, however, chose to help East Germans, which resulted in a “shared sense of freedom”. Germans have always thought of Hungary as a “neighbour without shared borders,” and the relationship reached a new level in 1989, he said.

September 10, 2019

Politicians of Fidesz now and then about abortion

Leading politicians of Fidesz have contradicted their former young liberal selves several times already. The most conspicuous difference can be seen in the sentences of Viktor Orbán (PM) and László Kövér (House Speaker) about abortion from the 1990s.

One of the readers of Index sent an interview to the news portal about Viktor Orbán, László Kövér, and Tamás Deutsch with Reform magazine from13th July 1990, according to 444. Their thoughts about abortion became a hot topic because of the 3rd Demographic Summit of Budapest, where László Kövér stated:

“Those who think that having children is a private issue and oppose the intervention of the state serve the “culture of death.”

He blamed “anti-national communists” and those people who support legal abortion for being responsible for the population decline of Hungary. This is not the first time that the House Speaker announced scandalous statements. However, politicians of Fidesz used to speak in a very different way three decades earlier.

“Those who want to reduce the number of abortions, which was 90,000 this year, to 2-3,000 with the help of lawful tools, are not people but monsters,”

said Viktor Orbán in 1990. “Women do not go have an abortion as a hobby,” László Kövér added.

hungary romania house speaker — Photo: MTI/Veres Nándor

“The normal, lawful governmental approach to the issue would not be desirable from the legal but from the social side of public welfare. Laws can be made for free; meanwhile, for a realistic approach, a concept and a lot of money are needed. Converting the abortion debate into a governmental issue would be the same kind of mistake as introducing compulsory religious education at schools of the state with a governmental measure. Not only because of its social concerns that would divide society even further but because it would incite significant tension in people,” said László Kövér in 1990.

The number of abortions drastically fell back in the ’70s and has constantly been decreasing since the change of the system – according to data from KSH (Hungarian Central Statistical Office).

September 9, 2019

PM Orbán opens ITU Telecom World conference in Budapest – UPDATE

Hungary is set to become a success story of an increasingly digitised world economy, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in his opening address at the ITU Telecom World 2019 conference in Budapest on Monday.

Digital economy has stable roots in Hungary, Orbán said.

“Hungary is already a digital economy in the heart of Europe. The future has already started here, and we hope Europe will also follow that road by concluding the related debates and acting in unity,” he said.

In the past few years, Hungary has demonstrated it does not only plan its future but also makes it a reality, Orbán said. In Europe, Hungary has the lowest VAT on internet, 5 percent, and a modern test centre for electronic vehicles has recently been inaugurated in its southwestern region, he noted.

Orbán said that

the digital economy provides some 25 percent of Hungarian GDP, and employs some 400,000 people, about 10 percent of the total workforce.

UPDATE

ITU Telecom World 2019, the global tech event for governments, corporates and small- and medium-sized enterprises, opened its doors today to four days of exhibition, debate, networking and awards amongst some of the most influential names from across the information and communication technology (ICT) sector.

Hosted by the Government of Hungary, the event was launched in the presence of Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary, alongside Houlin Zhao, ITU Secretary-General, Francis Gurry, Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization, Nguyen Manh Hung, Minister of Information and Communications, Vietnam, together with high-level government leaders and representatives, regulators and leading industry Chief Executive Officers.

“Together, I am confident we will be able to expand avenues for cooperation and ICT infrastructure investment, make ICT applications and services more relevant, secure and affordable, and give people the tools and skills they need to navigate and succeed in the digital economy,”

said ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao, welcoming delegates to ITU Telecom World 2019 and back to Budapest, four years after ITU Telecom World 2015. “Together, we can and will bring about connectivity that matters, the theme of this year’s event − here in Hungary, the region and the rest of the world.”

Addressing delegates via a video message, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres spoke of the importance of new technology to save lives: “There is no doubt: innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence, 5G and the Internet of Things can help us achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and improve the lives of all. We must harness the opportunities they bring, while mitigating the risks.”

Francis Gurry, Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said that the theme of this Forum, Innovating together; connectivity that matters, “illustrates the relationship between ITU and WIPO, but also a much deeper truth and that is that ideas and development are nourished by connectivity. Connectivity with others inspires innovation. Telecommunications are a fundamental driver of the innovation in the world today.”

Speaking on making a new telecom infrastructure ready for a digital economy and a digital society, Nguyen Manh Hung, Minister of Information and Communications, Vietnam, Host Country for ITU Telecom World 2020, said

“Telecom is now becoming ICT, and ICT is becoming a new infrastructure for a digital world. To make this happen, we need more innovations in technology, in policy and in strategy. This is a long way to go. And we should go together.”

The Opening Ceremony marked the start of an action-packed few days of high-level debate, dialogue between business, a raft of innovative small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in technology and governments, showcasing, networking and a high-profile Awards Programme and ceremony. The event was also marked by the launch of an ITU Telecom World 2019 Commemorative Stamp, by György Schamschula, CEO Magyar Posta, during the Event Opening Press Conference.

Hungary wins bid to host Intl’ Olympiad in Informatics

September 9, 2019

Hungarian foreign minister warns against ‘socialist-type’ proposals

Some Western European countries are seeking to break central Europe’s competitiveness “through a socialist-type economic policy”, the foreign minister told MTI on Wednesday on the sidelines of an economic forum in Poland’s Krynica.

Péter Szijjártó cited “demands” to harmonise taxes and debt communitisation. He warned that if such proposals were to be implemented “the competitiveness of the central European region as well as of the European Union as a whole would be killed”.

Harmonising taxes in the EU would mean hiking taxes in Hungary, therefore the Hungarian government “will fight this to its last breath”, he said.

Concerning the idea of debt communitisation, he said “this would mean nothing other than passing the debt of some countries with irresponsible economic policies onto other EU members”. He added that Hungary’s public debt has been continually decreasing in recent years.

Thanks to structural reforms and “brave reform steps taken”, central Europe has some of the lowest taxes on the continent, and the investment environment is the most attractive. Central Europe has become the engine of economic growth for the entire continent, yet some western European countries plan to reduce central Europe’s competitive advantage by trying to force through the EU’s socialist-type bureaucratic measures, he added.

Szijjártó said

the EU could only be made competitive again if competition were allowed internally.

Economic competition within the EU is clearly in the interest of Hungary and central Europe, he added.

Szijjártó also mentioned competition within the EU at the plenary session that opened Wednesday’s programme in the economic forum. He said it was one of seven preconditions that must be fulfilled in order to make Europe strong in the face of global competition.

The second precondition, he said, was to guarantee the security of Europeans, adding that Brussels’ migration policy was dangerous and the protection of borders was paramount.

The third issue he cited was the protection of Christian culture and identity, saying the “we want EU leaders who are ready to handle Christian heritage as a priority.”

The fourth precondition he cited was an “honest debate on EU funds in the budget after 2022”. Central European countries have the right to these funds, not least because they allowed western companies to enter and profit from their markets, he added.

Szijjártó said the fifth precondition was that Europe must be based on strong nation states, adding that “we will never approve a United States of Europe” and “will never yield to pressure that aims at making us surrender our identity”.

He cited EU expansion as the sixth precondition, stating that “we believe the more we are, the stronger we are”. He said

Brexit was regrettable and urged the acceleration of Western Balkan integration.

The last precondition he said was getting rid of double standards that he insisted were being applied against Poland and Hungary.

September 4, 2019