A couple of weeks ago in Prague, the prime ministers of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic declared that they would oppose the European Commission’s plan to redistribute 120,000 refugees across the European Union. They resolutely rejected the proposed quota system. The Czech Republic hosted the meeting as current president of the Visegrad 4 Group (V4). Polish Prime Minister […]
In the doldrums of summer, there is a growing and increasingly public conflict between Hungary’s Orbán government and the Ponta administration in Romania. In just the past two days, the diplomatic representatives of the two countries, serving in Budapest and Bucharest, have been summoned by the respective foreign ministries of the two EU member states and both are claiming that […]
Before turning to the description of RCA Viktor’s Canadian sound system, a system in which Hungary’s diplomats in Canada play a commanding but not exclusive role, I want to make some general observations about the standards diplomatic representatives are expected to uphold in those countries that belong to the Transatlantic community (TAC). This is necessary in order to gauge whether […]
If you haven’t tried it yet, you must taste the Hungarian Kashkaval cheese. This delicacy is fabulous! Those of you who don’t know, Kashkaval is a yellowish cheese made of cow or sheep milk, and it is popular in Romania and in the Balkan countries. Also, a favorite treat in the Arab world. Growing up in Hungary, I never heard […]
By now, I lived most of my adult life in California, and I consider myself a proud citizen of this state, which is also the home to the largest Armenian community outside Armenia. April 24th is the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, and there were commemorations all over California. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the massacre of more than […]
The opposition Democratic Coalition (DK) joined Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz and the Christian Democratic Peoples’ Party (KDNP) in voting to send 150 soldiers into Iraq, in order to bolster the American-led campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS). While Fidesz, KDNP and DK supported the mission, the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), the Politics Can Be Different (LMP) green party, the […]
The fact that Hungary’s pro-Moscow foreign policy has managed to alienate key partners like the United States, Germany and regional allies within the Visegrád Group isn’t much of a success story for Budapest. But at least Hungary’s 36 year old Minister of Foreign Affairs, Péter Szijjártó, got an admittedly warm reception in Tatarstan this week, where he inaugurated the Hungarian […]
I put the word “strategy” in quotation marks for a reason. When Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Péter Szijjártó, gathered together his increasingly rag-tag group of lackeys and personal football friends-turned-ambassadors and diplomats earlier this month to announce, alongside Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the ministry’s decision to replace its policy of “opening to the east” with a new “opening to […]
The 25-year-old Visegrad Group, also called the Visegrad Four, is supposed to be an alliance of four Central European states – Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland andSlovakia – for the purposes of furthering European integration and advancing political, military, and economic cooperation. As it turns out the Visegrad Four is dead. In the last couple of months it has become clear that the Visegrad Four members fundamentally disagree on how to approach […]
There seems to be a distinct sense of confusion in Hungary’s foreign policy, a lack of direction and haphazard action, instead of a clear, coordinated strategy, and one which takes into consideration changing geopolitical realities and interests. On Thursday, the country’s largest daily paper of record – Népszabadság – observed that things may still get much worse in terms of […]
