Hungarians must take the future into their own hands and mould it for themselves, President Katalin Novák told members of the Hungarian Permanent Conference and the Hungarian Diaspora Council on Thursday, at an event held in Parliament. Referring to the Hungarian population, Novák said it was not only possible to halt the tendency of the population to shrink but to reverse it. The Carpathian Basin, she added, would become “the cradle that cradles children. Let the Carpathian Basin be the wellspring of life,” the president said.
László Kövér, the Speaker of Parliament, told the same event that crises harboured positive outcomes, and “Hungarians have a chance to win the 21st century” rather than being saddled with losing 20th. For Hungarian communities abroad, ethnic politics have not lost their raison d’être, he said, and national minorities and national majorities alike needed to assert their national interests. Such communities, he added, sought to preserve themselves and their homeland in the coming century did not want to “disappear into the abyss of history”.