Europe's left wing is using Hungary to criticize the right, more than a year before elections to the European Parliament and five months before Germans go to the polls, Public Administration and Justice Minister Tibor Navracsics said on public radio on Sunday.

Tibor Navracsics told Kossuth Radio that attacks against Hungary inchildren's programming by two German public television broadcasters were especially offensive. These programs demonstrate a lack of understanding, he said, adding that Germany should, for several reasons, better understand the problems of Eastern Europe than do other countries in Western Europe.

The Minister blamed the "high emotions" directed against Hungary on the upcoming German elections and suggested that as long as Hungary is in the spotlight in the German press, attention is directed away from the country's own problems.

Not a week has gone by in the past two years during which left-leaning dailies have not lamented the alleged end of democracy and freedom of the press in Hungary, but these same papers were silent when the police attacked demonstrators who protested against the previous government, he said.

Minister Navracsics said that determining the limits between open debate of public issues, the freedom of speech and the violation of the private sphere is a serious ethical problem in democracies, a problem that other countries deal with too, citing recent scandals at the News of the World and the BBC. While the UK's top decision-makers recently tried to regulate the public and the private sector, and define the relationship between the rights of the press and personal rights behind closed doors, Hungary's media law came into being only after public parliamentary debate and an international discussion.

(MTI, Ministry of Public Administration and Justice)