Magyar says he and Zelensky spoke about meeting soon in Transcarpathia

“There are basically two summits taking place in Dublin: the summit of the European Political Community was held on Thursday-with political leaders from outside the EU in attendance-and the informal EU meeting taking place on Friday,” Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar explained in a telephone interview from Dublin on Friday in the the public radio’s program called “Felkelő”. The budget is not the main subject of the summit according to Magyar, who added that a decision on it will likely be made at the EU summit in late November.

Among others, the Hungarian leader spoke with the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, the President of Switzerland, and the Prime Minister of Ireland on Thursday, and also sat down for 10 to 15 minutes with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“The President and I spoke about a meeting, but not in Budapest or Kyiv-what came up as a location was Transcarpathia,” Magyar continued, adding that the two countries' foreign ministers are currently in talks about setting up the meeting for as early as the end of November.

The Prime Minister also touched on his trip to Berlin this week, noting that cooperation between the Hungarian pharmaceutical industry and Germany was among the subjects discussed there. He was asked about Hungarian economic growth, to which he replied that, unlike the previous government, they are talking about realistic figures, rather than projecting a fast-start (which was one of the repeated promises of the Orbán government for 2025).

He was also asked about Viktor Orbán’s one-and-a-half-hour interview, which aired on Thursday, to which he replied that he did not think he should concern himself with the interview of someone who has a family member under arrest. In response to Orbán's criticism of the government's budget proposal, he said: “The budget we put on the table is a well-founded one.”

The discussion then turned to how political analyst Gábor Török reacted to Magyar’s Thursday announcement that the Hungarian Parliament would ratify the Istanbul Convention and that prescriptions for the morning-after pill would no longer be required. The political analyst wrote that “after yesterday’s events, however, the think tank presumably concluded that a swift and effective response was necessary.” Török was referring to the fact that Magyar’s ex-wife and former minister of justice Judit Varga mentioned her ex-husband several times during Wednesday's hearing before the Parliament' committee investigating the Völner-Schadl case (a corruption case involving the President of the Court Bailiffs and the former State Secretary of the Justice Ministry who worked directly under Varga during her tenure.) Following Varga’s hearing, she and PM Magyar took to social media to argue about child support payments.

When asked whether it had been previously planned that the announcement about the package would be made from Dublin, the Prime Minister replied that, in his view, as Prime Minister, his job is not “to analyze analysts,” and added that those who argued that such a package isn’t put together overnight were absolutely right, as the various ministries have been working on the individual elements of the announced measures for quite some time.

When asked how soon the matter of ratifying the Istanbul Convention might come before Parliament, the Prime Minister said he believed it would happen without delay.

As for his comments on social media from the day before the announcement, he was also asked whether he regretted always having his phone in his hand, to which Magyar replied that he regretted that once again they were not talking about what really mattered. However, his words also indicated that, ultimately, he agreed with the suggestion that if the undignified events from the day before had led to his announcement, then it was worth it.

“I’m learning a lot too; I’m only human, I’m a father, and I’m very pleased with the measures announced yesterday,”

Magyar concluded on the subject.

They also discussed the case of Sándor Lezsák —in which the former lawmaker’s name (and that of 163 other individuals) was mistakenly included in the agent files among members of the network due to an IT-related error, when he was, in fact, the one being surveilled. In the Prime Minister’s view, the matter had already been thoroughly discussed, the situation was clear, and everyone had apologized, including himself. It’s a shame that this story turned out the way it did, but he stands by his view that the opening of the files corrected a decades-old oversight. When asked whether Gergő Bendegúz Cseh, Director General of the Historical Archives of the State Security Services, could remain at the helm of the archives after offering his resignation, Péter Magyar replied that his personal opinion was that he couldn't “but it is not up to me to say so, nor was I the one to whom he offered his resignation". He also added that in his view, a leader should not abandon a sinking ship until the problem has been resolved.