Category: VOLUME II, No. 2

THE COMMON GOOD (THE BAD AND THE UGLY)

„For three men… reads the poster for the classic western, ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ (1966), ‘the civil war wasn’t hell, it was practice.” “A bounty hunting scam joins two men in an uneasy alliance against a third in a race to find a fortune in gold buried

PIPELINES, PLATFORMS, PROSPECTS

European Energy Security NT: Hungary and Slovakia have just signed an agreement to build a new gas pipeline linking the two countries. Last October a new, 100 km gas pipeline was opened with great fanfare, linking Hungary and Romania. Work continues on a pipeline linking Hungary and Croatia. How much longer

SOLID, EXPERIENCED WORK

When Hungary took over the EU Presidency on 1st January, it should have made for very satisfying news. The second Central European country to try its hand at the helm of the Union, to be followed by Poland later this year. The two countries that, together, brought down communism, will

NATIONAL BANK POLICIES AND THE HUNGARIAN ECONOMY

Politics of bank rates  The Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB), the Hungarian National Bank, raised the policy rate in January 2011, the third time since the change in government that took place in May 2010. The rate increase drew a rebuke from the growth-focused government, which called it “unjustified” in a

CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNANCE AND THE COMMON GOOD

As a specialist in civil and commerical law, I am glad to have the opportunity to contribute to the restoration to political thinking in Hungary, after several years of conspicuous absence, of the notion of service of the common good as a legitimate aim and obligation of the state. It

FROM FOCE TO FAMAGUSTA

About tolerance and ritual, and the problem of sincerity A conversation on the sidelines of the International Summer School of Religion and Public Life in Nicosia, Cyprus in July 2010. NT: You have written about the need for a new and deeper understanding of tolerance, beyond or instead of the modern

FAITH MARKET IN HUNGARY

The history of Christianity can be described as a battle against various superstitions, beliefs or pagan traditions – or those which are at least regarded as such. Christian ecclesiastical historiography has long emphasized, with a pleasure related closely to the economy of salvation, the alleged or real similarities between the

HUNGARY AND THE BREAK-UP OF YUGOSLAVIA – A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY – PART I

When in 1989 political change swept through Central Europe and the communist dominoes fell, Yugoslavia was in a deep economic crisis, aggravated by growing tensions between the six “Socialist Federal Republics,” or rather between the national groups which constituted the Southern Slav State. Many Slovenes and Croats hoped to achieve

THE LAST REFUGE

Anti-Communist Partisans in the Romanian Mountains In 1990 in Romania, soon after the fall of the Ceauşescu dictatorship, 34 year old Ioana Voicu began searching for her real parents. She had been brought up in an orphanage, to which she now returned with a simple question. She wanted to find

‘WITH COURAGEOUS FAITH…’

On the Occasion of the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Ferenc Liszt … With courageous faith you spread the fame of Hungarian music, and in distant lands do not forget where they once rocked Ferenc Liszt’s cradle. (lines from the poem To Ferenc Liszt, by Mihály Vörösmarty) Ferenc Liszt was