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Picture of Zsolt Németh

Zsolt Németh

ZSOLT NÉMETH is a founding member of Fidesz (Hungarian Civic Party), and Member of Parliament since 1990. He studied political science at the Oxford University St Anthony’s College as a visiting student in 1988–89. He holds an MA in Economics and Sociology from Karl Marx (Corvinus) University of Economic Sciences at Budapest. Since 2014 he has been Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee and Head of the Hungarian Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly to the Council of Europe. Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee between 2002 and 2010; Parliamentary State Secretary in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 1998–2002 and again in 2010-2014. In 2004, Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament for a year. One of the main sponsors of the Act on National and Ethnic Minorities (1993), granting individual and collective rights and the right to self-government for ethnic and national minorities living in Hungary, as well as of the Act allowing non-resident Hungarians to apply for Hungarian citizenship if they are of Hungarian origin and speak the language (2010). He is also a founder of the Pro Minoritate Foundation; Honorary Chief Superintendent of the Calvinist Congregation of Transylvania; Member of the Knight’s Order of the Johannites.

‘The Brezhnev Doctrine is now
a thing of the past’

We talked with Zsolt Németh in the room of the House of Parliament from the balcony of which, in 1956, Imre Nagy addressed the crowds gathered below in Kossuth Square, and from which Mátyás Szűrös declared the Republic on 23 October 1989. Flying high in front of the balcony is

Narratives of Hungarian–Polish Foreign Policy
after 24 February 2022

It seems as though the Russian aggression against Ukraine has generated several secondary frontlines, one of which is the misinformation campaign against Hungarian–Polish friendship. Polish public opinion is being rapidly conquered by the false claim that Hungary is pursuing a pro-Russian policy. In turn, there are voices in Hungary which

ON TRIANON IN THE PRESENT TENSE

“No less importantly, our next-door neighbours—Slovaks, Ukrainians, Romanians, Serbians, Croatians, Slovenes, and Austrians—have shared a common fate with us here in the Central European region for a thousand years, even if Trianon made our experience of coexistence fraught with bitterness for a long time.” From the perspective of present-day Hungary,

HUNGARIAN FOREIGN POLICY AFTER THE CORONAVIRUS

“What is the trend and magnitude of the changes Hungarian foreign policy will be forced to implement as the world emerges from the coronavirus crisis? Are we going to be compelled to make any radical changes at all? Or is it rather the case that the pandemic merely amplifies already

TRIBUTE TO SIR ROGER VERNON SCRUTON

“Roger Scruton’s figure is dear to me personally because he had a good nature of a quiet, light-hearted, amazingly knowledgeable and well-informed man, friend and master. I met him in 1988, in Oxford, the place that is a hallmark of intellectual quality, but he had pragmatic political projects up in

THE FUTURE OF EUROPE

Keynote Speech on the Occasion of the 60th Anniversary of the Treaty of Rome Budapest, 23 March 2017 There are three common misunderstandings about Hungary in the EU that must be clarified; namely, misunderstandings about 1) what we do not want, 2) what we want and 3) what we judge