Hungary’s weeklies put Chancellor Merkel’s talks in Budapest on Monday and President Putin’s visit two weeks later in the context of Hungary’s position as a NATO member country that has consistently voted against sanctions against Moscow, while working on new joint projects with Russia. READ MORE
As opposition groupings plan to hold demonstrations to welcome Chancellor Merkel in Budapest in February, commentators believe she will concentrate on relations with Russia rather than internal Hungarian affairs. READ MORE
A leading pro-government journalist quotes international comments in praise of PM Orbán, for deciding to convert mortgages denominated in foreign currencies before the surge of the Swiss Franc. The move helped hundreds of thousands of households avert catastrophic losses. READ MORE
As PM Orbán elaborates his thoughts on immigration, a pro-government columnist agrees with him that intra-EU movements cannot be considered as migration. A left-wing columnist, on the other hand, criticizes PM Orbán for identifying the Charlie Hebdo murderers as immigrants. READ MORE
Left-wing commentators join opposition politicians in condemning the Prime Minister for his comments that Hungary will not become a target destination for ‘economic migrants’. A right-wing blogger reminds them – and the US Chargé d’Affaires – of the Mexico-US border fence erected against illegal immigration. READ MORE
The leading left-wing daily fears that Vladimir Putin’s March visit, announced this week, is another indication of the Hungarian government’s Eastern orientation. A conservative analyst points out that Hungary needs to maintain good relations with both Germany and Russia. Another left-wing commentator suspects that PM Orbán may want to revise the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Ukraine. READ MORE
Left-wing bloggers wonder if the demonstrations continuing into the New Year carry messages meaningful enough to eventually produce a new political majority, while conservative commentators suggest that the organisers have yet to offer constructive proposals for Hungary, beyond the desire to rid the country of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. READ MORE
In a two part essay, a liberal pundit argues that for the moment, anti-government opposition groups do not offer a clue as to how they would govern if they succeeded in unseating the current government. The Prime Minister, he explains, has realized that in order to gain public support, he needs to govern according to public sentiments rooted in the late 1980s, in the last Communist years in Hungary. READ MORE
Commentators across the political spectrum agree that after three consecutive easy electoral victories this year, the government is now under unexpected pressure. In their last issues before the end of the year, the weeklies tend to believe that the governing forces owe their difficulties to their own mistakes, although foreign pressure is also being mentioned among the causes. READ MORE