Poland

Jobbik MEP Gyöngyösi: Has Europe learnt a lesson about migration?

Remarks of Jobbik MEP Gyöngyösi

Although the European Union is often rightfully criticized for being cumbersome and lagging behind international events, I think it’s important to take note of the achievements, too. One such achievement is that the EU didn’t repeat the mistakes of the 2015 migration crisis. When the Belarusian dictator released the crowd on the Polish border to try and blackmail Europe, he was surprised to see it wouldn’t work. Europe has learnt its lesson.

2015 is certainly a turning point in the area of European migration policy. Until then, you were not supposed to have any other opinion than the commonly held idea that the relatively rich European countries are morally obligated to let in whoever arrives at their border, regardless of the reason why they came. However, the combined effect of the German government’s misguided policy, the consequences of the Arab Spring and the advancing Islamic State led to the emergence of an unprecedented migration wave.

The uncontrolled crowd flowing across the EU borders and the subsequent wave of terrorist acts that shook Western Europe have shown us that if Europe fails to change its position, it could create a huge crisis.

Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka may likely have been counting on a similar crisis and expecting the European politicians to point fingers at each other, when he artificially tried to create yet another migration crisis on Poland’s border as a response to the sanctions imposed on his country. However, the EU reacted completely differently than it did six years ago. While most of Europe’s key political players had nothing against crowds of people entering the EU across the Schengen border with no control whatsoever back in 2015 (in fact, many of them even encouraged these people on the grounds of some misunderstood humanitarian idea), today we have a consensus inasmuch that the Polish border must be sealed and protected.

While the outer Schengen states were completely left to their own devices in 2015, today there is no doubt that Poland and the Baltic States must be given help to protect the integrity of their borders.

This help is not just financial by nature. It also involves giving more time to the countries bordering on Belarus to examine asylum applications as well as providing assistance to repatriate the rejected applicants. We must also mention the work of the EU foreign missions: they managed to convince Iraq not to let its citizens to Belarus and to take back those who are already there.

Quite naturally, EU member states still have different opinions on legal migration, but we must make it clear to everyone that illegal migration is not some kind of romantic adventure but a potentially lethal enterprise for everyone involved.

Furthermore, it’s based on a fundamental violation of law and therefore a hotbed for crime, which we must contain by all legal means.

Demonstrating an assertive stance, the EU tore the supposed trump cards out of Lukashenka’s hand, and the same happened to the populist politicians who go for guidance to the same place as Lukashenka… Keep up the good work!

Read alsoJobbik MEP Gyöngyösi: Follow the traffic lights – New German govt’s impact

December 19, 2021

3 Hungarian universities among the 30 best in Europe and Central Asia

ELTE University Higher Education Hungary

A total of 16 Hungarian universities managed to grab a place on Quacquarelli Symonds’s (QS) list of best universities for 2022.

According to Hellómagyar, the British Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) evaluates the performance of emerging universities in Europe and in Asia each year. The leading universities on the latest list are Russian, with Lomonosov Moscow State University taking the first place.

As the company wrote, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) has grown to become the world’s most popular source of comparative data about university performance.

And while Poland and the Czech Republic are also quite high on the list, each having two universities in the top 10, Hungary has also achieved comparatively great results.

On the latest list, QS evaluated fifty more universities from Europe and Central Asia, having a total of 450 universities ranked on the 2022 list.

In total, 10 Hungarian universities managed to make it into the top 33%.

According to the list, the best performing Hungarian university was Eötvös Loránd University, reaching overall 26th place from all nominees.

However, two more Hungarian universities got to be included in the top 30 contenders. Tied at 29th place are the University of Szeged and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.

This means that 3 Hungarian universities are placed in the top 6.67% of all partaking universities of Europe and Central Asia, which is excellent performance.

To adequately gauge the performance of the best universities, QS used a series of criteria. The criteria are the following: academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty-student ratio, faculty staff with PhD, citations per paper, papers per faculty, international research network, international faculty ratio, international students ratio, and, last but not least, the web impact of each university.

From these categories, Hungarian universities are especially good at international research networks, with the best 3 Hungarian universities each scoring over 90 points.

The other category they excel at is Web Impact with over 95 points each.

If you want to browse the complete list, you can find it HERE.

Read alsoStudent satisfaction in Hungary higher than EU average

December 18, 2021

MTVA chief discusses public media cooperation with Polish TV official

Dániel Papp, the chief executive of Hungary’s public media provider MTVA, discussed the possibility of expanding programme exchange, joint programme production and professional training with Mateusz Matyszkowicz, board member of Polish public TV company TVP, in Budapest on Friday.

“We share common cultural roots here in central Europe and we share the same views about the role of public media, and it is clear that, from this point of view, it can benefit both of us if we speak a common language,” Papp said, according to a statement released by MTVA’s press and marketing department.

“It can be beneficial from the point of view that we can produce content that can be used here, in Hungary, and in Poland as well.”

Matyszkowicz said he learnt of new technologies upon visiting MTVA’s sports and news studios and new ideas about a current affairs channel’s operation.

They also discussed the possibility of speeding up the exchange of news and producing joint content, the statement said.

Read alsoKatalin Karikó’s team is chosen as Hero of the Year by TIME

December 18, 2021

Minister: ‘Poles are our eternal and trusted friends’

Gergely Gulyás, the prime minister’s chief of staff, called Poles Hungary’s “eternal and trusted friends”, in his keynote speech at a conference in Budapest on Thursday.

Gulyás addressed the conference hosted by the University of Public Administration (NKE) commemorating the 40th anniversary of Poland’s leaders imposing martial law.

Gulyás noted that the histories of

the two nations were closely linked,

adding that their interests and values intertwined as well. “These values include individual and collective freedoms, national self-determination, and the fight for these causes,” he said.

He said the communist crackdown on the Polish people in 1981 had been a “siege” rather than a declaration of a state of emergency, as it had been called by Hungary’s communist leaders at the time. Because the military intervention in Afghanistan had left the Soviet Union too weak to intervene in Poland, “the communists there decided to impose the harshest measures,” Gulyás said. Wojciech Jaruzelski’s coup led to bloodshed, the internment of tens of thousands of people and violent crackdowns on protests and strikes, he added.

Read also: Memorial plaque for late Polish President Lech Kaczynski unveiled

Gulyás said Pope John Paul II had played a crucial role in the final decade of communist rule and in helping the region regain its freedom.

“Without 1956, there wouldn’t have been a 1981,”

he said in reference to Hungary’s ill-fated anti-Soviet uprising. “Without any resistance and heroes, there would have been no change of regime . and there would have been no free Poland, no free Hungary and no free central Europe, either.”

“It is our shared experiences that highlight the importance of the European values that are truly characteristic of the continent,” he said, adding that

freedom, democracy and the rule of law were not a given, “as many have done so much for central Europe to be free today”.

Katarzyna Ratajczak-Sowa, Poland’s deputy head of mission to Hungary, said she found it necessary to pay tribute to those who had suffered and died for Poland’s independence. She said Hungarians and Poles were on a “centuries-long journey” toward a Europe of free and independent nations, and had remained allies even when it seemed that violence could triumph over solidarity.

Read alsoPolish, Hungarian presidents opened Planet Budapest 2021 expo

December 16, 2021

Visegrad Group leaders held talks with Macron

The Visegrad Group (V4) leaders held “exhaustive talks” with French President Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said after the summit in Budapest on Monday.

Orbán told a press conference he held jointly with his V4 counterparts and Macron that the French president had laid out plans and goals of France’s upcoming European Union presidency.

Apart from the “passionate” discussions on the issue and the rule of law and the “thorough and exhaustive” talks on migration, the five leaders also discussed the situation in the Western Balkans and the issue of energy — nuclear power, in particular — as well as the future of the EU’s emissions trading system, Orbán added.

The prime minister said it was a “rare opportunity” for the five of them to be able to “speak openly about such important issues”.

Orbán thanked Macron on behalf of the V4 for his openness and future-mindedness, and for having given the central European grouping the chance to think ahead about the most important goals of the French EU presidency.

In response to a question, the prime minister said he and Macron often had “sharp debates” which he said he enjoyed.

read also: Macron held talks with the Hungarian joint opposition

A debate is only bad if there is no “quality” to it, Orbán said, adding that in future, too, he looked forward to having “quality debates” with the French president.

Orbán said this meant that Hungary would always give the president of France the respect he deserved, partly because of who he is and partly because the French president “is highly valued in Hungary”. Orbán praised Charles de Gaulle as a “point of reference”, and he noted that Giscard d’Estaing had visited Hungary to campaign for Fidesz before it won the 1998 general election. He added that he had worked together with Jacques Chirac and noted that Nicolas Sarkozy’s ties to Hungary were well known.

This is why, he said, he showed Macron and France respect by not giving his opinion on French domestic politics.

Orbán said Hungary, along with its secret services, was governed by the rule of law. “When we started out in politics, this was not the case, since we come from the resistance to the communist regime,” the prime minister said. “We came into politics from the world of freedom fighters and street fighters.”

In response to another question, Orbán said Hungary’s economic performance and financial situation were assessed by the market. The euro zone, he said, was a “lukewarm and nice place” where the order of things was determined by the bloc’s Stability and Growth Pact. “But the market is cold and cruel,” he added. “That’s where we have to hold our own,” Orbán said, adding that the value and strength of the Hungarian economy was measured on the markets.

Hungary “is in good shape so far”, he said, adding, at the same time, that the government needed to keep an eye on the budget deficit.

As regards the government’s planned reacquisition of Liszt Ferenc International Airport, Orbán said it was not reasonable to close the deal before the 2022 election given the high rate of inflation and the volatility of the global financial markets.

“So we’ll wait for the elections and decide on this afterwards,” he said.

Orbán also said the EU’s payouts of the pandemic recovery monies Hungary was entitled to were delayed for “political reasons”. He said it was “completely unacceptable” on the part of the European Commission to expect Hungary to amend its law on family rights and education. “What does this have to do with restarting the European economy? What does this have to do with spending the funds sensibly?” he said.

“We’re the victims of political blackmail”,

Orbán said, adding that Hungary’s economy would survive without the funding for a long while yet, and all the relevant projects were under way thanks to state pre-financing.

He said neither the economy nor Hungarians had suffered as a result of “Brussels’ blackmail”.

The prime minister said Hungary had been alone in deciding to put up a physical barrier to protect the border and Europe as a whole, but had been on the receiving end of “the harshest attacks” from “Brussels and several European capitals” for its efforts.

The government, he said, had not taken offence or complained, knowing that it was protecting Europe as well as the country.

But now Hungary’s standpoint had changed, he said, adding that several countries would have to spend serious money to defend themselves and the Schengen border. “It’s high time the European Union showed some solidarity,” he said.

Orbán said

Hungary had supported other EU member states, but Brussels had not reciprocated.

He underlined Hungary’s demand that at least half of the costs of protecting Europe that Hungarian taxpayers borne should be picked up by the EU.

Read alsoMacron held talks with Orbán in Budapest

December 13, 2021

Emmanuel Macron to meet influential politicians in Hungary

The French president will meet a number of influential Hungarian politicians.

Emmanuel Macron will meet Budapest’s lord mayor, Gergely Karácsony, prime minister candidate Péter Márki-Zay, and Klára Dobrev, EP representative and member of the Democratic Coalition. Macron will also meet Anna Donáth, the president of Momentum. The French president will hold a discussion with Gergely Karácsony on Monday afternoon, writes hvg.hu.

The reason for Macron’s visit to Hungary is to attend the meeting of the V4 where he will meet Hungarian President János Áder and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

“The Visegrád Group (also known as the “Visegrád Four” or simply “V4”) reflects the efforts of the countries of the Central European region to work together in a number of fields of common interest within the all-European integration.

Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia have always been part of a single civilisation sharing cultural and intellectual values and common roots in diverse religious traditions, which they wish to preserve and further strengthen,” states the official website of the collaboration.

Péter Szijjártó Foreig Minister of Hungary

Read alsoHungarian FM: the key to the success of the Visegrád Group is ‘common sense’

They add that “the V4 was not created as an alternative to the all-European integration efforts, nor does it try to compete with the existing functional Central European structures” and that “the Group aims to encourage optimum cooperation with all countries, in particular its neighbours, its ultimate interest being democratic development in all parts of Europe”.

France is once again holding the rotating presidency of the EU for the thirteenth time since 1950. Their previous mandate was in 2008 under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy.

Paris is organising about 400 meetings in the future, and Macron has announced the future plans. These could be topics to discuss at the meeting with Hungarian politicians.

Macron said that the future plans for the EU are to maintain the sovereignty of the Member States, at the same time strengthening European sovereignty. The rules of the Schengen Area should be reformed in order to defend the borders and prevent the abuse of the right to asylum, writes portfolio.hu.

In order to achieve this, an option would be for European ministers to hold discussions with each other regularly and make arrangements. Help to defend the borders should be offered. In dealing with migrants, there is a need for better organisation and collaboration against human trafficking.

Read alsoTop court: Hungary has right to supplement incomplete EU laws

December 12, 2021

Hungarian FM: the key to the success of the Visegrád Group is ‘common sense’

A key of the success of the Visegrád Group (V4) countries has been that they have based their economic and security policies on “common sense”, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in a video message to a joint V4 parliamentary committee meeting on Friday.

The grouping comprising the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia is “the closest, most effective and most successful” alliance within the European Union today, the minister said.

In recent years the four countries have achieved results together that they could not have on their own, he added.

Szijjártó highlighted the V4’s thwarting of the introduction of mandatory migrant quotas as the group’s biggest achievement. If Brussels’s “crazy proposal” had not been rejected, there would be tens or hundreds of thousands of migrants on the territory of the V4 countries today, he said.

Szijjártó praised the V4 as an “extremely strong and competitive region”. This, he said, was demonstrated by the fact that if the grouping were a single state, it would be the third most populous EU country and the world’s 15th largest economy.

One of the main reasons for the region’s success is the use of “common sense” in economic and security policy, Szijjártó said. He praised the advantages of low tax rates when it comes to attracting international investment and job creation.

Tax policy, he said, should remain a national competence, adding that the V4 must insist on that element of their sovereignty. Hungary will carry on with its tax cuts “even if some don’t like it”, he said.

Meanwhile, Szijjártó said the EU had also made several mistakes in the area of energy security. He said the details of the European Green Deal had not been fleshed out thoroughly enough and that the document was being used more as a “political communication tool”.

Szijjártó said the government considered environmental protection important, adding, at the same time, that it was crucial to “remain sensible” in this area as well. The minister said it had been a “big mistake” to turn Europeans against natural gas and nuclear energy.

More than 70 percent of Hungary’s electricity demand will be supplied by the country’s nuclear power plant in Paks by the end of the decade, he said, noting that Hungary had recently signed a new long-term gas purchase agreement with Russia’s Gazprom.

As regards migration, Szijjártó said EU member states should insist on their right to determine who can and cannot enter their territory.

Read alsoBelarusian dictator’s confidant travelled with a Hungarian visa

December 11, 2021

Memorial plaque for late Polish President Lech Kaczynski unveiled

A memorial plaque to late Polish President Lech Kaczynski was unveiled in Veszprém, in western Hungary, on Wednesday, Jerzy Snopek, Poland’s ambassador to Hungary, told MTI.

The plaque was proposed by Snopek during preparations for the annual Polish-Hungarian friendship celebrations in Veszprém in 2018.

Addressing the dedication ceremony, Snopek said the plaque was aimed at further developing the

friendship between Poland and Hungary, “in which Lech Kaczynski was a staunch believer”.

The plaque was designed by renowned Polish sculptor Michal Wisnios and its creation supported by the Polish Embassy in Budapest, the Veszprém County local council, the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland and the National Polish Self-government of Veszprém.

Read alsoPolish, Hungarian presidents opened Planet Budapest 2021 expo

December 9, 2021

Warsaw meeting involved leaders wanting to preserve sovereignty, says official

Several political leaders who want to preserve sovereignty met in Warsaw on Saturday and decided to tighten cooperation, the minister in charge of families said on Monday.

Katalin Novák attended a meeting of leaders of a number of European conservative and right-wing parties in the Polish capital.

“A debate about the future of Europe is very timely,”

she told public news broadcaster Kossuth Radio’s morning programme.

“We must collectively state in which direction we, Europeans, want to go,” she said.

Many agree that some irreversible trends have started in Europe and issues, such as demographics, migration and the mass influx of migrants must be discussed, Novák said. The pressure of migration has been continually rising since 2015 and the leaders of several European countries, including the newly formed government in Germany, decided to make their respective countries immigrant countries, she added.

“If that’s what the Germans want, they should do it, but without forcing their will on other countries, including Hungary,”

the minister, a member of ruling Fidesz, said.

“The most important question is how Europe wants to be renewed,” she said.

“Whether we want children to be born or we want to yield to the pressure of migration and even lure migrants to Europe,” she added.

Novák said an additional question was “what we think about traditional values and whether we want to subject ourselves to gender propaganda or whether we want to strengthen traditional families and help young people to start a family and have children”.

read also: EU trying to intervene in the Hungarian 2022 general election?

The Warsaw meeting involved “several but not all” political leaders who have a similar approach to these issues and they decided to strengthen relations, she said.

Novak said it was in Hungary’s “eminent interest” to be a member of the European Union, to belong to the community of European countries.

Novák said however that the direction the European Union had taken was wrong, with “leaders not elected by anyone” heading some important institutions in Brussels. “They are only interested in keeping their high salaries and positions and want Brussels institutions to have the power to decide on matters relating to the sovereignty of member states,” she added.

The leaders who met in Warsaw consider sovereignty very important and they want to preserve it, she said.

Read alsoViktor Orbán: Brussels fails to protect families and children

December 6, 2021

Viktor Orbán: Brussels fails to protect families and children

Brussels is supporting migration and does not protect families and children which should be the other way round, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in a video on Friday evening, after arriving in Warsaw.

The Polish capital is a host of twelve party leaders who seek “to be a voice of the many tens of millions of people who are European citizens but do not feel represented in any platform at all,” Orbán said on Facebook.

“We do not want migration, what we want is for families and children to come first,” he said, adding that their aim is to change the politics of Brussels.

EU trying to intervene in the Hungarian 2022 general election?

Brussels seeking to control members states’ migration policy?

“We have been making preparations for months to set up a strong and influential party alliance,” Orbán said, expressing hope that the meeting on Friday and Saturday would take significant steps to achieve that goal.

Bertalan Havasi, Orbán’s press chief, said earlier that the Hungarian prime minister would travel to Warsaw to participate in a working meeting of European conservative party leaders.

He told MTI on Friday evening that Orbán had met Mateusz Morawiecki, his Polish counterpart, before participating in a working dinner of the European party leaders.

Read alsoGovernment: migrants used as pawns in hybrid warfare

December 4, 2021

183 companies on Planet 2021 expo in Budapest – PHOTOS

The world must take action “globally as well as locally”, President János Áder said at the Planet Budapest 2021 sustainability expo and world conference on the event’s second day on Tuesday. “Global action can be successful through the deeds of nation states,” he said in his address to the event.

The decades-long motto of “think globally, act locally” was no longer enough, Áder said. It should be changed to “act globally, act locally”, he added.

People from 120 countries are at the conference in Budapest over the next few days to discuss climate change, the impending water crisis, measures to protect biodiversity and build a circular economy. On the conference’s agenda are the threats as well as opportunities generated by climate change, the dichotomy of energy security and political stability, financing circular and green economies, water and food safety, rapid technical developments in transport as well as waste management, the president noted.

Áder highlighted Hungary as

one of ten European Union countries to have reduced carbon-dioxide emissions by over 30 percent since 1990.

Fully 70 percent of Hungary’s electricity is carbon-emissions free, while the country has doubled its woodlands in the past 100 years, he said. The world’s most developed countries (G20) “may have similar indicators”, he added.

The president warned that a single centimetre layer of fertile soil took one or two centuries to develop, while “in just a few years we make the soil infertile by using bad technologies and through greed”. Only 0.7 percent of the world’s non-frozen reservoirs contain clean freshwater, while “mankind is constantly polluting”.

The sustainability expo held simultaneously with

the conference offers products by 183 Hungarian, Polish, Czech, and Slovak companies in connection with sustainable food production, water management, energy supply, transport, urban development and waste management, Áder noted.

Hungarian companies to develop Ecuador, Sierra Leone, Uzbekistan, Cuba

The products are aimed at reducing man’s carbon footprint and the energy consumption of buildings and transport emissions, saving arable land and improving the fertility of the soil and its water retention, as well as preventing food waste.

Concering Hungary’s contribution to common goals, Áder said the country will shut down its sole remaining coal-based power plant between 2025 and 2030, reducing Hungary’s carbon emissions by a further 10 percent. By 2050, the country will have increased its wooded areas from the current 22 percent to at least 27 percent, he said, adding that the capacity of solar plants will have doubled from the current 3,000MW by 2030, while

all municipal transport buses will be electric.

The government has also set the goal of not leaving any sewage untreated by 2030, he said.

The president also noted the recently opened Mura-Drava-Duna Biosphere Reserve of 1 million hectares, set up in cooperation with 5 neighbouring countries, as well as the introduction of sustainable development as a subject in Hungarian secondary schools.

Cooperation in the Visegrad Group is setting an example in sustainability that the European Union should follow, Polish President Andrzej Duda said at the Planet Budapest 2021 sustainability expo and world conference on Tuesday. Duda said cooperation in regional partnership enabled the participants to successfully cope with current challenges.

“Effective efforts for sustainable development made by the V4 countries also inspire others to improve quality of life in society,” he added. He said he was pleased to see that the V4 countries were on a common platform with ever greater frequency as regards the most important topics.

“As the Visegrád Group is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary,

there is clear evidence that the V4 is the fastest developing region in the EU, narrowing the gap economically as well as giving impetus to growth and helping European developments return to the right path,” he added.

Also, in a video message sent to the same event, Slovak counterpart Zuzana Caputova talked about the importance of global action. Caputova said the pandemic was also a reminder of how ecosystems were interlinked and “our actions can upset natural equilibria”. “We are only one month past the Glasgow climate summit and we must maintain pressure and make efforts to reduce our global climate footprint,” she said. “Sustainable development requires global action, which also applies to the largest emitters,” she added.

Caputova said the planet and democracy must be protected to ensure long-term sustainable development.

Read alsoPolish, Hungarian presidents opened Planet Budapest 2021 expo

December 1, 2021

Polish, Hungarian presidents opened Planet Budapest 2021 expo

The Planet Budapest 2021 Sustainability Expo and Summit got under way at the Hungexpo in Budapest on Monday evening, with President János Áder and Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda opening the event.

In his inaugural speech, Áder said everyone must bear responsibility for the future, and he quoted Hungarian writer Sándor Márai with the exhortation: “Take care not to miss the moment”. Referring to concert performances opening the event, the president said the young artists from four countries had not missed the moment.

“For those of us gathered in Budapest to take responsibility for our common future, our task … is to give these young people a better world to live in; better than it otherwise would be.”

Áder said that hopefully the expo and summit would provide a venue for “a meaningful exchange of ideas” and a springboard for further work.

President helps plant 700 trees along motorway in Hungary

The expo, which runs until Dec. 5, will feature 185 exhibitors, more than one-third of which come from the Visegrád Group (V4) countries. Ranging from the smallest startups to the largest corporations, they will showcase the latest solutions from central Europe in areas such as sustainable agriculture, smart cities, waste management, energy efficiency and green transport.

Planet Budapest 2021 expo to open today with presidents’ address

Attending the event are

leading political decision-makers, academics, representatives of international organisations, financial institutions and businesses showcasing specific green solutions.

The expo aims to promote sustainability and identify lessons that can be learned and changes that can be implemented in a post-coronavirus world.

One major programme is the Your Planet exhibition where 66 installations will present the adverse processes shaping the Earth’s future and potential solutions to them.

Read alsoPlanet Budapest 2021 with 180 exhibitors to start next week – here are the rules

November 30, 2021

Hungary’s Mathias Corvinus Collegium co-hosts Rome conference on EU judiciary

Hungary’s Mathias Corvinus Collegium and the Centro Studi Machiavelli held a conference on the European Union law’s relationship to member states’ basic laws late on Thursday.

The event was held in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Italian parliament, with lawmakers of the League party, and MEP Nicola Procaccini of Fratelli d’Italia attending.

Francesco Giubilei, a leader of the conservative Nazione Futura movement, said the event was a contribution to “rethinking” the workings of the European Union.

Orbán: Migration pressure expected to ramp up

Fidesz MEP: ‘Real power in EU held by narrow circle’ – Le Point

“Polish, Hungarian and Italian speakers agreed that the common judiciary of the bloc, as declared in the EU, in reality means politically motivated actions from Brussels executed by commissioners, as happened in the case of Poland and Hungary,” he said.

Read alsoUN expert: Freedom of expression and media freedom under threat in Hungary

November 27, 2021

Visegrad Group expresses solidarity with Poland in migration crisis

The Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia pledged solidarity with Poland in the migration crisis on its border with Belarus, at a summit in Budapest on Tuesday.

At the joint press conference after the talks,

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki thanked Viktor Orbán of Hungary, Eduard Heger of Slovakia and Andrej Babis of the Czech Republic for their support.

Morawiecki said the situation amounted to a “new political crisis” where Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko “colluded with the mafia and people smugglers and used human beings to put pressure on the European Union.”

Babis noted that

Hungary had faced “all around criticism” when it built a fence to protect its borders in 2015.

By now, several heads of state have proposed that the EU should fund physical barriers, he said.

Heger called the protection of the European Union’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and member states a “joint task”.

He said he had talks with Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg on the situation earlier on Tuesday. The two leaders signed a declaration and pledged to provide help on the Polish-Belarusian border. They also condemned the exploitation of migrants, he said. Slovakia has already offered its Frontex officers to help manage the situation in Poland and Lithuania, and was one of the countries turning to the European Commission for help, he said.

Orbán: EU facing unprecedented levels of migration pressure

Speaking to the media with his Czech, Polish and Slovak counterparts, Orbán said Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki had briefed the rest of the V4 on the situation on his country’s border.

In addition to the migration pressure on the Polish border, “NGOs are continuously bringing migrants to Europe’s shores” and the Western Balkan route “is again full”, the prime minister said.

Orbán thanked Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis for his decision to send soldiers to the Hungarian border and their help in apprehending more than 4,000 illegal entrants.

He said people fleeing Afghanistan would also make their way to Europe via the Western Balkan route. Some 30,000-35,000 people are fleeing the central Asian country on a daily basis, so the EU should expect the pressure on the Western Balkan route to increase, he added.

“And the Poles are on the receiving end of the latest attack,” Orbán said.

“Our Polish friends are the ones under attack because of migration from the east.”

The prime minister criticised Brussels’s “flawed” migration policy, saying that the EU was prepared to fund “practically anything that increases migration pressure”.

Brussels supports NGOs and launches integration programmes, he added.

The one thing Brussels refuses to finance is border protection, Orbán said. Hungary insists that the EU should cover the costs of the protection of the European borders, he said, adding that countries located on the bloc’s periphery cannot be expected to bear those costs alone.

Hungary has always said that it would only be fair if the EU covered at least half of the costs of the country’s border protection efforts “given that we’re not just protecting ourselves but the whole of Europe”, Orbán said.

The V4 proposes that the EU should not support a single country that contributes either directly or indirectly to the migration pressure on the bloc’s external borders, including the pressure on the Polish border, Orbán said. He added that the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia had expressed their full solidarity with and support for Poland at the meeting.

read also: EU backs sanctions for use of migration as mode of manipulation, says Hungarian minister

Read alsoShould the EU pay for Hungarian border protection?

November 23, 2021

V4 countries back nuclear energy for climate protection

The Visegrád Group countries have signed a joint declaration that achieving climate goals cannot happen without nuclear energy, according to government website kormany.hu on Thursday.

The combined use of nuclear and renewable energy is vital for energy sovereignty and security, keeping energy prices affordable and decarbonising energy production, Janos Suli, the minister without portfolio responsible for the Paks nuclear plant upgrade project, said, speaking alongside representatives of the Czech, Polish and Slovak governments in Paks, in southern Hungary.

The V4 calls for greater energy efficiency and, as well as

increasing the share of renewable energy sources,

meeting the 2030 and 2050 carbon targets would require the development of electricity transmission networks and the use of gas-fired power plants in the medium term, as well as the flexible use of carbon quotas, it added.

The V4 welcomed the European Commission’s statement that nuclear energy is a safe technology and in full compliance with EU environmental standards. Brussels, the declaration added, should treat nuclear energy as a sustainable energy source, also from the point of view of financing, it added.

Read alsoHungary committed to building hydrogen economy, says technology ministry

November 18, 2021

EU backs sanctions for use of migration as mode of manipulation, says Hungarian minister

Following its latest review of the situation on the Belarus-Poland border, the European Union has backed the use of sanctions against Belarus for using migration as a mode of manipulation, Hungary’s foreign minister said in Brussels on Monday.

Under the resolution approved at Monday’s meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council, the EU can impose sanctions on people and organisations who use migration as a mode of manipulation, Péter Szijjártó said on the sidelines of the meeting. The list of specific individuals and entities to be sanctioned will be decided later, he added.

The EU faces “unprecedented levels of migration pressure”,

Szijjártó said, arguing that the bloc was “under siege from the south, the south-east and the east”.

He said the Visegrad Group had also held a special meeting on Monday where the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia all offered their help to Poland.

When Hungary found itself in a similar situation in 2015, the other V4 countries all came to its aid, the minister said.

Concerning the migration pressure from the south, Szijjártó emphasised the importance of improving living conditions instead of supporting emigration in troubled African countries.

Hungary does its fair share when it comes to such efforts, he said, noting that by end of 2023 the country will have contributed a maximum of 80 soldiers to Europe’s Takuba Task Force fighting Islamic State-linked militants in Mali.

Szijjártó also urged speeding up the EU integration of the Western Balkans, saying Hungary expected the bloc to begin accession talks with Albania and North Macedonia and to open at least two accession chapters with Serbia before the end of the year.

“Anyone who blocks this must bear the responsibility for the historic levels of damage that will cause in this region,” he said.

Meanwhile, the minister said Hungary would support an Eastern Partnership country deepening its ties with the EU only if its leadership respected the rights of national minorities like those of Ukraine’s ethnic Hungarian community.

On another subject, he said Azerbaijan could become a key player when it comes to Europe’s gas supply, but this required investments in infrastructure and increased extraction rates.

“If we can’t make that work, then no one will have the right … to criticise us for having to sign a long-term gas supply deal with Russia,” he said.

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November 15, 2021

MEP Gyöngyösi: migrant crisis at the Belarusian border is the price of indecision

Remarks from Jobbik MEP Márton Gyöngyösi:

For years now, Europe has been unable to answer two major questions that fundamentally shape the world around us. The first one is the relations with authoritarian leaders and their regimes, the second one is the migration issue. Europe has been experiencing the increasingly serious consequences of doing nothing but crisis management instead of developing a consistent concept and strategy. More clearly than ever, the migrant crisis unfolding at the Poland-Belarus border shows the EU’s indecision in both these issues.

The European Union is an interesting organization: although it has become much more than a loose alliance by now, whenever it comes to taking a common stance, it immediately proves to be much less than a real federation. However, the challenges just never seem to be waiting patiently until the European integration gets ready to meet them. As a result, the EU is still basically stumbling through the obstacles in its way, with little to no chance to affect or shape the surrounding world, unfortunately.

The last years brought two major challenges where a common stance and a consistent policy was more sorely needed than ever before.

The first question was: how should Europe relate to the authoritarian regimes of the world? Should it try to weaken or even topple them, and undertake the economic and security risks involved? Or should we perhaps overlook the differences between our political systems and aim to maintain good relations with them for business profit and momentary security, while giving up Europe’s projected image as the defender of democracy and human rights? There are plenty of arguments for both options but, in lack of a consensus, the EU has so far failed to stand for either of them. Instead, it just stuck with the embarrassing indecision. The EU-Minsk relations are a clear example of that. After the fraudulent Belarusian elections in the summer of 2020, the European Union made all sorts of promises to Lukashenka’s opposition – only to lie idly by while the Belarusian dictator methodically and literally destroyed the protests. By imposing anti-Lukashenka sanctions and minimizing EU-Belarus relations however, we lost any remaining influence and managed to push Lukashenka over to Moscow’s side for good, while the members of the Belarusian opposition still at large have every reason to feel completely let down by the EU.

No other scenario could have been worse than this one.

The other major issue was migration, where we have not been able to lay the foundations for a real strategy, either. Hesitating between the two dominant ideas, i.e., “let everyone in the EU for humanitarian reasons” vs. “seal the borders and manage the issue as a security and policing affair”, the European Union was unable to find its own position. The current system, where we generally refuse to let anyone in, but if they still get across the border somehow, then we give them asylum and take care of them, is good for no other purpose than to create insecurity and incite political unrest.

What we see at the Poland-Belarus border stems from these two problems: the EU has been trying to shirk its responsibility and get away with putting off decisions for so long that it finally got stuck in the web of its own indecisiveness.

That’s exactly what Lukashenka is leveraging on right now. This crisis was actually created by us, Europeans. If Europe decided to generally let in the migrants waiting at the border, Lukashenka would hardly find it profitable to spend money and energy on facilitating a process that’s already going on without him anyway. If he nonetheless decided to do so, everybody could still just walk across the EU’s border. On the other hand, if Europe decided to put an end to illegal migration once and for all and protect its borders no matter what, so that it could preserve its security and social peace, Lukashenka would no longer be interested in allowing migrants to crowd the Polish border.

If he did, he would only harm his own country, because those thousands of people would remain stranded in Belarus until they could return home.

This situation is truly a crisis – the crisis of indecision.

Unfortunately, the only ones who profit from situations like these are the populists. For example, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has just flown to Ankara to talk about migration with the Turkish government…

Read alsoShould the EU pay for Hungarian border protection?

November 15, 2021

Fidesz MEP: “Brussels and the Hungarian left want to take our freedom”

Brussels and the Hungarian left want to take our freedom, but the allied ruling Fidesz and Christian Democrats (KDNP) will defend it, Fidesz’s MEP Tamás Deutsch told the party’s 29th congress in Budapest on Sunday.

“Brussels is abusing its power and waging a cold civil war against Poland and Hungary. They are putting on a full-court press to take our freedom,” he said. “In the 21st century, there are still those who think they can take it, those who want to tell us how we should live”, Deutsch said.

“They would destroy everything that our freedom is based on the cohesion of our families, the traditional form of marriage and raising children, our debating communities based on free thinking, our churches, and finally our national sovereignty,” he said.

He said that Fidesz-KDNP will defend the country’s freedom both in Brussels and Budapest. They will defend the freedom of Hungarians to decide on utility prices and will stand up for the development funding that Hungary is entitled to.

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Fidesz-KDNP will continue to say no to immigration, he said, adding that “Brussels wants to force a migrant resettlement quota on us”. Brussels and the Hungarian left also want to take the right of Hungarian parents to decide how to raise their children but Fidesz-KDNP “will say no to aggressive LGBTQI+ sexual propaganda threatening our children”, said Deutsch.

Addressing the congress, Marek Kuczynski, of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) highlighted the importance of Polish-Hungarian friendship, noting that freedom and sovereignty were basic values for the two countries.

PM Orbán: Polish-Hungarian alliance grows stronger
Source: dailynewshungary.com https://dailynewshungary.com/pm-orban-polish-hungarian-alliance-grows-stronger/

“The sovereignty of our nations is under attack from both East and West, with the EU trying to force a superstate model on them. Thanks to Hungarian-Polish cooperation and the cooperation of the four Visegrád Group countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia -, central Europe will remain strong, so they must continue to work together,” he said.

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November 14, 2021