31st March 2011
I have in my hands Hungary’s newest media product – hot off the press. It’s the high quality, information-packed, inaugural edition of the popular BBC “History” Magazine in Hungarian, which I helped launch at a press conference this morning. Congratulations to the Kossuth Kiado Publishing House for bringing it here. The BBC brand continues to […]
21st March 2011
59 years in jail, reduced to 35 years, for satire? It sounds like a bad joke. But this is the sentence handed down by the regime in Burma in 2008 to popular comedian Maung Thura, better known as Zarganar. And his case is a good example of why the international community continues to call on […]
13th March 2011
Clearly energy will be a prominent feature of our work in connection with Hungary’s EU Presidency throughout the spring. The Commission published its Low Carbon Roadmap on 8 March and UK diplomatic efforts are now focussed on raising Europe’s ambitions to build a low carbon economy. This effort is especially relevant in Central and Eastern […]
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25th February 2011
Earlier this week I sat with the UK Sports Minister and leading members of the Hungarian Olympics and Paralympics Committees. Hugh Robertson was visiting to attend the Sports Ministerial Informal meeting at Gödöllő and at the end of his programme made time to meet our partners and ask what we could do to help them […]
21st January 2011
The British Government aims to be the “greenest ever”. So it is no surprise that in recent official meetings – and we have many more visitors to Budapest than usual as a result of Hungary’s EU Presidency – UK Ministers and officials have raised the subject of renewable energy and Hungary’s geothermal potential. Thermal waters […]
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18th January 2011
We are already well into the Hungarian Presidency, with Ministers and senior officials pouring in from other EU countries for Presidency meetings. In the last week we have had meetings of Europe Directors; Political Directors: and Europe Ministers for a GAC or General Affairs Council (all from Foreign Ministries); we are in the middle of […]
8th January 2011
Hungary is now officially Presidency of the Council of the European Union. I was present at a short and dignified ceremony on 6 January, in the spectacular Dome Hall of the Hungarian Parliament, when the Prime Minister of Belgium formally handed over this important function in the presence of a large audience of Ministers, officials, […]
5th January 2011
Well, for those of you who read my previous posting, I did get stuck in London when my plane was cancelled. I eventually made it back to Budapest on Tuesday with two of my children and a colleague – using a combination of taxis, train, ferry and a 16-hour drive from Calais in stormy weather conditions. […]
19th December 2010
I have spent the last week in cold, wet, snowy London and hope I am not going to be stuck here for too much longer by flight cancellations due to the snow. This is as a result of the huge, current level of interest in Hungary and how it is going to manage its EU […]
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29th November 2010
Last week the National School of Government came to Budapest for an extremely useful training session for a group of Embassy staff on what to expect under the Hungarian EU Presidency. They covered for example the EU decision making process; the challenges we will face; how the rotating Presidency fits into the new EU architecture; […]