Prime Minister Viktor Orbán inaugurated Egis Pharmaceutical Company’s new pharmaceutical technology research and development unit and analytical development laboratory building in Budapest, which were built with a total expenditure of 7 billion forints.
Minister of Human Resources Zoltán Balog held a press conference in the internationally renowned Matthias Church, where he announced that further 700 million forints were allocated in order to finish the building’s renovation.
State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and External Economic Relations Péter Szijjártó held consultations with the biggest British investors in Hungary on 25 September. The State Secretary briefed British employers on the government’s job protection action plan as well as on measures designed to ease red tape and administrative burdens.
At the meeting of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council in Brussels, Minister for Rural Development Sándor Fazekas requested that emergency aid be transferred from the European Union Solidarity Fund for the mitigation of drought damage. The Minister also proposed the simplification and if possible temporary waiving of agricultural-environmental regulations, in addition to suggesting that 80 percent of 2013 direct funding should be payable in advance instead of the current 50 percent.
State Secretary Szijjártó told Issa H. Murad, the President of the Jordan Europe Business Association (JEBA) and other members of the delegation that developing economic cooperation with the Arab world was a key objective of Hungary’s economic opening to the East.
At the amicable meeting, Minister of Public Administration and Justice Tibor Navracsics and Minister of State for Justice Robert Répássy said that following a decision by the Hungarian constitutional court, new regulations on the retirement of judges had been submitted to the National Assembly.
Danuta Hübner, Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Regional Development, has been awarded the Pálfi István Memorial Medal, an annual award created by Tibor Navracsics, Minister of Public Administration and Justice.
Speaking as Hungary’s representative at the Council of Europe’s Justice Conference in Vienna, Minister of State at the Ministry of Public Administration and Justice Róbert Répássy said that urban violence in Hungary is not present to the same degree as in some western European countries, such as France.
Deputy Prime Minister Tibor Navracsics has sent another letter to Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Justice, related to the case of Francis Ciarán Tobin, who has been convicted of dangerous driving resulting in death, and whose extradition in Hungary was refused by the Irish authorities.
‘The state is good if it serves the interests of its citizens and has no external goal for which it uses its citizens to accomplish, in the way that the state did under the Arrow Cross and Communist dictatorships.’ This was the central message of Tibor Navracsics, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Administration and Justice, when he spoke on Friday at the Budapest College of Communication and Business, at the invitation of that institution and the European Federation of Journalists.