Ukraine’s parliament accepted a law this week, which has been widely condemned by political parties of all stripes in Hungary and by ethnic Hungarian community leaders in Ukraine. If Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signs into law the bill accepted by legislators, Hungarian children in western Ukraine will no longer be able to study in Hungarian beyond Grade 4. Ukraine’s Minister of […]
After 48 hour of offering no commentary whatsoever on a ruling by the European Court of Justice that dismissed both Hungary’s and Slovakia’s complaints about equitably resettling mostly Syrian refugees among EU member states, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán finally spoke to the issue in his usual Friday morning radio interview. The usually loquacious Hungarian prime minister was frugal with his […]
The language statistics of the 2016 Census were in the news a few weeks ago, after an error by Statistics Canada showed an unexpected increase in the number of English-speakers in the French-majority province of Québec. Before the error was discovered, the reported growth of the English community sparked the usual nationalist consternation among some Québec politicians about the “threat” […]
Documents uncovered this week suggest that the Orbán government’s motivation for handing back to Azerbaijan Ramil Safarov, the Azeri axe murder convicted of killing an Armenian army lieutenant in Hungary, may have been financial gain. In 2012, Hungary earned global scorn for transferring the murderer to a country where he was welcomed as a hero. Here in Ottawa, Canada, the […]
A growing list of prominent Hungarians, including conservatives, are supporting an initiative to launch a national referendum on the adoption of the euro in Hungary. More accurately, the proposed referendum is actually about Hungary joining the EU’s Exchange Rate Mechanism, which is the first formal step in having the euro replace the forint as Hungary’s currency. (The Fundamental Law does […]
At a weekend picnic of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party and its propagandists within the media world and educational sector, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned: the most important question in the April 2018 national elections is whether the country will be able to defend its border fence against some 60 million migrants that he anticipates will leave Africa and try to […]
Károly Makk was a Hungarian film director and screenwriter of international stature, comparable to Miklós Jancsó or Péter Bacsó, who brought postwar Hungarian cinema to European and western audiences. Károly Makk died at age 92, on August 30th, 2017. At the time of his death, he served as the president of the Széchenyi Academy of Literature and the Arts. Born […]
Outgoing Dutch ambassador Gajus Scheltema’s suggestion that the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán creates enemies along the same lines as Islamic terrorists sparked a political firestorm in Hungary. Mr. Scheltema said, as part of a response to journalists from the 168 Óra weekly on the risk of terrorist attacks, particularly after Barcelona: “A car attack can occur anywhere in […]
The University of Debrecen in eastern Hungary announced that it is awarding Russian President Vladimir Putin with the distinction of Civis Honoris Causa. Only two other people have been awarded the honour before Mr. Putin, namely György Habsburg, the former president of the Hungarian Red Cross and the son of Austria-Hungary’s last crown prince, Otto von Habsburg, and Rudolf Schuster, […]
Hungarians are seeing a major increase in their wages, with the average gross monthly salary now standing at 297,000 forints, or US$1,154. This represents a 14.4% increase compared to 2016 figures released by the Central Statistical Office (KSH). Inflation in Hungary is at just 2.3%. The bulk of the increase is connected to the 15% to 25% rise in the […]
