Menczer: Government always aims to protect Hungarian interests

Responding to a question from commercial television channel RTL concerning a report that Russian intelligence services had infiltrated the Hungarian foreign ministry’s IT systems two years ago, Menczer said he did not discuss national security matters with the press.

Menczer said that like every other country, Hungary, too, was a target of attempted influence and intelligence-gathering operations, and it was the job of the relevant agencies to counter those attempts and take the necessary steps.

He noted that in 2015, news portal 444.hu had been the one to report that the United States had eavesdropped on then German Chancellor Angela Merkel, while Merkel had listened in on then French President Nicolas Sarkozy. “There are even serious cases of NATO and European Union allies eavesdropping on each other,” Menczer said.

“Unlike the left, we always act in line with Hungarian interests when it comes to matters of national security,” he said, adding that former Socialist prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany had “brought the Russians into the secret service, and if I recall correctly, someone was even jailed for this”.

Menczer said he was “extremely curious as to which secret service 444 cooperates with and who is funding it to release information that concerns and weakens national security” at a time “when one of the EU’s two pro-peace prime ministers is shot, and only one, Viktor Orban, remains capable of action, and we’re protecting Hungary’s peace and security”.