Praising the awardee, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said: the award goes to the best possible place because, according to his conviction, János Martonyi did as much as possible to make Hungary a civil, sovereign country respected in the world.

János Martonyi, a jurist and former foreign minister, received this year's Award for Civil Hungary from Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Ádám Kavecsánszki, chairman of the board of trustees of the Foundation for Civil Hungary, at a ceremony held in Budapest on Monday at the Hungarian Royal Stables.

Throughout his life, János Martonyi advocated that the essence of European integration is the maintenance of national identity, therefore integration is not possible without the strengthening of nations. He made this doctrine Hungary's official European policy, said the prime minister.

The Prime Minister put it this way: the work of János Martonyi " is of the same essence as the country-building of István Széchenyi and Gyula Andrássy, it marked our country's place in the world, and brought Hungary, which had been pushed to the periphery, back among the cultured and respected peoples ".

He added:

As Minister of Foreign Affairs, János Martonyi has indelible merits in Hungary's EU accession and Western integration.

He was the one who led our country's first EU presidency, and in the meantime he always had time for his heart matters, international law and teaching - said the Prime Minister, highlighting that the work of János Martonyi "not only sets an example for us, but also gives us a task", his work has become the standard .

Viktor Orbán emphasized that the Civic Hungary Award has been presented for twenty years, but the value of the award is not determined by the number of years, because traditions are important, but what the award means here and now is even more important.

" Here and now, nothing less is happening than we are finally rewarding the person without whom we would not be here today. The Civil Hungary Foundation and the public would not be here, and the right-wing successes of the past thirty years would certainly have been missed ," he said.

He recalled: in 1994, Fidesz won the best in its history, "the Hungarian right-wing was in pieces, three small parties of a few percent sat in the Parliament" against the coalition of socialists and liberals.

As he said, that's when it became clear that they had to unite, and that's when János Martonyi said that there was a much more important task than uniting, they had to build up bourgeois Hungary, they had to reshape Hungarian public life, they had to cleanse the country of "the imposed on him by communist nerves".

We need to build not only a party, but also a community, a community that can serve as a stable foundation for a new political era. János Martonyi was ahead of his time with this realization. What he said as new at the time is now a trivial idea - recalled the Prime Minister.

He added: not only did they win the election in 1998, but " thanks to the philosophy of János Martonyi, we also changed the culture after 2010, the country really threw off the socialist instincts, we transformed the institutions, we gave Hungary a new basic law, we built a bourgeois Hungary. Thank you, János Martonyi ".

Viktor Orbán highlighted: "during the dark years of communist rule" such families as the Martonyi family preserved the bourgeois ideals.
He also said that a Hungarian, no matter how much he wants to, cannot avoid public life.

Hungarians know themselves from the fact that they have to enter the political arena for their principles and ideals, they can assert their principles and values ​​only if they fight for them, and "János Martonyi could not avoid this fate either".

As he said, although his heart was always drawn to the chair and the career of a lawyer, "politics found him from time to time, to our great luck", and he first became a state secretary in the Antall government, then a minister in the Fidesz governments and as a politician, foreign minister "he also fought for the values ​​and principles he brought from home".

The Prime Minister reminded: János Martonyi was convinced that national existence and Europeanness are not only compatible with each other, but also presuppose each other.

and although there were arguments about where the border between the two was, how reconciliation was possible, "somehow we always got through the difficulties".

Based on the rationale of the Foundation for Citizens of Hungary (PMA), János Martonyi earned the recognition for defining the foreign policy strategy after the regime change, for its implementation and management, for his outstanding intellectual achievement in Hungarian jurisprudence, and for his dedicated preparation of future generations of legal scholars.

János Martonyi said that this event was one of the most important in his life and thanked him for the award. He recalled: at the time, there was a lot of discussion about the word citizen, whether it carries political content or expresses an opposition, but they had to realize that this term is above political categories, "because citizenship is not a social status, not even a qualification ".

A citizen basically carries a world view and behavior, and the most important thing is that the citizen is the one who works for his community, who brings his individual interest into the community interest and community interest advocacy. Being a citizen is basically behavior, spirit and morality, he explained.

PMA is the party foundation of the Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Alliance. The chairman of the PMA board of trustees, Ádám Kavecsánszki, said at the award ceremony that " special attention is given to the person who has earned the recognition of the foundation with his personal commitment and performance ".

As he said, we rarely praise or raise achievements above ourselves, which is why the Foundation for Civil Hungary founded the awards, "because the awards are lighthouses for the community".

MTI

Front page photo: Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (j) presents the Award for Citizen Hungary to jurist János Martonyi, former foreign minister, at the Royal Hungarian Riding School on December 16, 2024.
MTI/Zoltán Máthé