Category: Current

Rethinking and Preserving the European Union Renewal, reinvention, re-foundation, restart, reset, renovation: just a few words most frequently used for what the European integration process happens to be in urgent need of. Words multiply, meanings are hazy and convey multiple messages. It is not only the messages, but also the

Reclaiming National Sovereignty Reflections at the Award Ceremony of the Friends of Hungary Foundation “Among all human ties, those of friendship are perhaps the most hallowed; and thrice happy is he who can say in full faith, ‘I have friends’.”1 It is by quoting this observation by István Széchenyi that

President Trump’s Commitment to Central Europe and its Co-operation “The Atlantic Ocean is not the frontier between Europe and the Americas. It is the inland sea of a community of nations allied with one another by geography, history, and vital necessity.”Walter Lippmann: US Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic (Boston,

In the 1970s I was fortunate enough to share an office in the London Daily Telegraph with the veteran war correspondent, Clare Hollingworth, who died in January this year in Hong Kong at the age of 105. Clare was a wonderful office partner, kind, helpful, generous with advice, and full

How then can the special relationship with the UK, the need to arrive at a fair, equitable and well-balanced solution which is neither a punishment, nor a reward, and the respect for the basic values, principles and interests of a European construction which will not stop with Brexit all be

It was the summer of 1990 and I was on my way to Budapest, to take up a position as a junior diplomat in the Australian Embassy. The world had just tilted on its axis, sparked by the opening of the Hungarian border a year earlier and the ripples had travelled around the world. The Berlin Wall had fallen and old certainties had

Two Decades on from Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations Some Westerners, including President Bill Clinton, have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise.Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations1 The concept of “human rights” does

There is pushing and shoving now at the railed gatesof Non-Being – the young mass-murderersare queuing up for their reward in heaven.Because they too in the end were blown apart,the question remains: can they be reassembledby the demons of the Prophet disguised as angelsor will their bodies go into orbitsomewhere

It is taking place quietly, without anyone noticing, nobody is talking about it, yet something is changing nonetheless. Not long ago I took part in two events organised by the Hungarian Institute in Pozsony (Bratislava) where representatives of cultures sat together who had not communicated much with one another before. The organisers invited a Hungarian university professor and me to discuss the

Youth movements are a new phenomenon in the history of Christianity. There were many movements with a goal, most often for reforming the Church and for returning to the roots, like the Gregorian movement of Saint Pope Gregory VII, the Cistercian movement, the conciliar movement or the Reformation itself. But all of those had a goal. Modern movements can also have a goal, but sometimes their aim is simply organising people, for the sake of community – as said in the English world,