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Gulyas: National, European identity ‘indisputable value’

The Hungarian government "is fighting to build a Europe in which belonging to a nation and being European are indisputable values," the head of the Prime Minister's Office said in a speech delivered on Thursday at a conference marking the 80th birth anniversary of former Hungarian foreign minister Janos Martonyi.

Gergely Gulyas, speaking at the event organised by the Habsburg Otto Foundation and the National Public Service University’s John Lukacs Institute, highlighted Martonyi’s “extremely rich career”. He said Martonyi had often reflected on the importance of having a “double identity: one cannot solely be European without also being Hungarian, Polish, French, or Austrian at the same time.”

Martonyi’s thoughts are needed “if we want to build a developing, bourgeois Hungary and a normal Europe,” Gulyas said. Martonyi’s ideas “make us all richer and we will need his experience in the future,” he added.

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