We asked Szijjártó’s press secretary whether ministry staffers really used to be sent to his press conferences

During Péter Szijjártó’s tenure as Hungarian minister of foreign affairs, staff members at the ministry were regularly sent to attend his press conferences—this is what several former and current employees of the foreign ministry told 444. After the article was published, we contacted Péter Szijjártó’s press secretary, Máté Paczolay to request a response to the publication’s claims. In response to our question, Paczolay explained in detail how they organized the briefings to ensure that all seats in the room were filled.

According to 444, the minister’s office would routinely notify the heads of various departments in advance about how many staff members were expected to attend each of Szijjártó’s bilateral press briefings, and prior to the events, the department heads were required to send a list with the names of those would be in attendance. According to the publication, all of this was necessary because the invited press and the delegations accompanying foreign guests would not have filled the room on their own.

Paczolay wrote that “the 444 article contains both truth and misinformation” and added that in order to get the full picture, it is important to note that Péter Szijjártó was the most active government official in terms of communication. “On a less busy day, there were one or two press events at the ministry of foreign affairs; on an average day, three or four; and on a busier day, five or six.”

According to the former minister’s press secretary, it is natural that when three press events were held in a single day, “the interest of the media would wane” by the third one, but they made every effort to ensure that none of the guests of the MFA were offended by having to “deliver a speech representing their country to an even mildly empty room.”

Therefore, “in such cases, they would invite staff members from the relevant specialized departments. Some took advantage of the opportunity, some did not; some came gladly, while others-apparently found it an added burden.”

Paczolay emphasized that participation was not mandatory. “I don’t have the exact information on this, but I’m certain that the ministerial protocol office kept making phone calls until every last seat was filled, since that was their job,” he wrote to Telex. According to the press secretary, “the heads of the various departments also found it beneficial for a staff member responsible for a given region to hear the foreign minister of that country—for which they were, in effect, responsible within the ministry—speak in person, as well as to have the opportunity to meet with members of the delegation accompanying the foreign minister.”

“So yes, the seats were always filled. Sometimes there were twenty journalists and thirty invited guests in a fifty-seat room, while at other times there were three journalists and forty-seven guests.”

In its article, 444 also reported that most of the press was excluded from the briefings to begin with, and a foreign affairs staffer told the paper that they once witnessed a colleague from the press department of the ministry dictating to the reporter of the state news agency (MTI) the exact questions they should ask. We asked Paczolay whether they usually coordinated questions with the correspondents of MTI, to which he replied, “No.”

“We issued press releases about each event involving Péter Szijjártó, and we streamed the entire press conference live on various online platforms, so it was very rare that MTI sent a reporter in person to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” he wrote.

He acknowledged that they coordinated with the journalists attending the press conferences: “We always asked them whether they were going to have any questions, or whether they would address issues unrelated to the topic of the visit—usually matters of domestic politics.” He wrote that the reasons for this were practical: on the one hand, this allowed them to structure the moderation and adjust the planned duration of the press conference accordingly; on the other hand, they would inform Szijjártó in advance to expect that domestic politics would be brought up alongside bilateral issues.

“This was the basic approach in our day-to-day work, but over the course of 12 years, there were countless unique situations requiring unique solutions, as we hosted guests from every corner of the world, each with different cultural customs and needs,” he wrote.

444 also reported that Gyula Budai, the ministerial commissioner responsible for measures to protect the economy, was present at every press conference, regardless of the subject. We also inquired about the reasons for this, and Paczolay wrote that since Budai was “essentially present at all of the foreign minister’s negotiations, he was a member of the delegation, and protocol dictates that members of the delegation need to attend press conferences because these are also part of the official program.”