At the start of his tour in Southeast Asia on 24 April 2012, Foreign Minister János Martonyi gave an interview to The Jakarta Post, the leading daily newspaper of Indonesia published in English. The Minister introduced the purposes of his visit in the paper aimed at Indonesian businessmen and decision makers, as well as foreigners living in the Asian country. The head of the Foreign Ministry focussed on the overview of the Hungarian-Indonesian relations, and following the interview, he negotiates with his colleague, Marty Natalegawa.
Alternative fuelled vehicles constructed by Hungarian university teams were presented on 23 April, 2012 in the driving technology centre of Hungaroring. The apparatuses that were available for on-site testing will compete at several international competitions in the near future. The Ministry of National Development will of to promote the engineering students' successful participation. A separate project office was set up in order to promote and coordinate higher education workshops.
At today’s informal meeting, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the President of the European Commission, Mr. José Manuel Barroso held an exchange of views about the issues under discussion between Hungary and the European Commission. Prime Minister Orbán informed the President of the Commission about the intentions of the Government in relation with these issues.
On 23 April Prime Minister Viktor Orbán took part in a workshop at the European Policy Centre in Brussels where he spoke about the general political and economic situation in Europe, and Hungary’s goals within that.
Participation of private capital in Hungarian sport financing system used to be quite poor and that is the reason why the new system of tax benefits for companies that provide additional subsidies for team sports was introduced.
According to the latest flash report of the Central Statistics Office (KSH), in the initial two months of 2012 retail sales totaled almost 1115bn HUF in Hungary. The turnover of foodstuff which makes up almost half of sectoral sales (48 percent) increased by the greatest extent in 5 months (1.7 percent) in comparison to the corresponding period of the previous year.
On 17 April 2012, Foreign Minister János Martonyi conducted negotiations with Peter Slipper, Speaker of the Australian House of Representatives.
Hungary and Lithuania are jointly providing help to Serbia so that it may integrate the European Union's food safety and animal welfare requirements into the Serbian legal system as smoothly as possible. The EU is providing 2 million Euros in support until 2014 towards the professional cooperation between our countries.
With the Széll Kálmán Plan 2.0 Hungary has complied with the requirements of the Council of the European Union, and the excessive deficit procedure related to the country can be resolved after years of failure to meet targets up until last year’s success.
On 1 May the Government will appoint János Fónagy as government commissioner for the restructuring of public transport, for a one-year term. The restructuring of public transport is one of the important commitments in the structural reforms launched in 2011 (Széll Kálmán Plan).