An ecumenical ceremony was held in Esztergom to honour Thomas Becket, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, which was followed by a conference on Christian values and European identity.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, founder of the Ferenc Puskás Football Academy, has been invited to the FIFA Ballon d'Or Gala in Zurich to be held today, the Prime Minister's spokesman Bertalan Havasi told Hungarian News Agency MTI.
Due to the illness of Foreign Minister János Martonyi, Parliamentary State Secretary Zsolt Németh represented the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the opening of the Hungarian–Italian Cultural Year at the Italian Cultural Institute in Budapest on January 6.
Hungary's government is ready to sign its next strategic cooperation agreements with the local units of IBM, National Instruments, TATA and Nokia Siemens Networks, business daily Napi Gazdaság reported on Monday.
2013 is the Year of Central Europe for Hungary because Hungary took over the Presidency of the Central European Initiative (CEI) on January 1, and will take over the Presidency of the Visegrad Cooperation as of July1.
„We need to make Central Europe stronger, and we can achieve that through reinforcing our solidarity” – Zsolt Németh told the Public Radio concerning the prospects of Hungary’s neighbourhood policy.
According to this morning's information summary from the Central Statistical Office (KSH), positive trends are continuing with regard to employment figures, which play a determining role in government policy.
Some of the implementation regulations of the new Waste Management Act that came into force on January 1 have been issued. Among others, the new regulations concern the distribution of packaging materials, the returning and recycling of packaging materials, the receipt of electric and electronic equipment that has become waste, and the handling of cars that have been removed from circulation.
The Hungarian Government has been following a political and legislative agenda which aims at expanding employment, maintaining budget discipline at an economic level as well as equal burden-sharing within society.
The simplified naturalisation procedure was introduced on January 2, 2011, and 363,795 applications have been submitted to Budapest over the past two years, with a further few thousand still on the way, meaning a total of around 370 thousand applicants. Interest remains high, something that is mirrored in the number of appointments made.
Hungary has earmarked 268 billion forints (EUR 0.92bn) for upgrading and extending regional hospitals and outpatient clinics this year, the National Development Agency (NFÜ) said in a statement on Thursday.
The Government has appointed State Secretary in charge of the Prime Minister’s Office János Lázár to prepare and coordinate the professional tasks related to the settlement of the financial compensation claims of Jewish communities as well as cultural, educational, historical fact-revealing and tradition-keeping activities concerning Jewish communities.
District offices were reintroduced on 1 January (thirty years after the abolition of the system of administrative districts), within a new organisational structure and with new goals. There are 175 district offices outside Budapest, and twenty-three in the capital. These will carry out administrative tasks below county level.
Minister of Defence Csaba Hende said Hungary's military had been able to "maintain its capabilities" in 2012 amid limited financial possibilities.
In order to promote the social inclusion of people living on the streets, the Government is making a total of HUF 917 million available within the framework of the New Széchenyi Plan.
For formal reasons, Hungary's Constitutional Court has annulled some transitional provisions of the Fundamental Law, including the one on voter pre-registration.
A total of 370 000 people applied for Hungarian citizenship over the past two years and the rejection rate was below 1.5%, Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén told Hungarian News Agency MTI on Wednesday.
The necessity of decisions can only be judged with appropriate objectivity by posterity Government Spokesperson András Giró-Szász said in an interview to Hungarian daily Magyar Hírlap.
2013 will be a Central European year in Hungary’s foreign policy as the country will serve as president of both the Visegrad Four Cooperation and the Central European Initiative (CEI).
The Hungarian Armed Forces will distribute drinking water in 123 towns from January 1, 2013, Maj.-Gen. László Domján, the Commander of the HDF Joint Force Command said on December 27 at a press conference in Csongrád County.
Foreign Minister János Martonyi congratulated Titus Corlatean on his reappointment as Foreign Minister in Romania's new government.
Hungary is a strong nation, which "stands the storms of a crisis" more successfully than several other nations "of more fortunate history and stronger economic fundamentals", Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview published in national daily Magyar Nemzet on December 24.
The Hungarian government has moved forward the goals of education policy, cross-border projects, human rights issues and institutional development in its relations with Hungarian communities abroad in 2012, the Parliamentary State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Zsolt Németh stated on December 26.
The reorganisation of the education system has been the greatest achievement of the government in the past two and a half years, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on public Kossuth Rádió on Sunday morning.
In the initial ten months of 2012 the sales volume of food, beverages and tobacco products stagnated year-on-year in an unfavourable global economic climate. In the tenth month of the year, however, this retail sub sector registered a decline of 1.2 percent in comparison to the corresponding period of the previous year. This figure is much more favourable than September data calculated by the same methodology (then contraction amounted to 3.7 percent).