István Nagy, the minister of agriculture, handed over state decorations and professional awards at a ceremony held at the Hungarian Agricultural Museum on Monday, the eve of Hungary’s August 20 state holiday. In his address, the minister said August 20, “the holiday of [King] Saint Stephen is to celebrate Christian faith, traditions, and culture, a three-fold unity that serves as a foundation for the cohesion and survival of the Hungarian nation”. “For a thousand years … we have been building our homeland, our shared home; the thousand-year-old Christian Hungarian state is therefore the shared achievement of the whole nation,” he said. “We Hungarians will continue on the path determined by the brave decisions and wise vision of Saint Stephen,” Nagy said. “Freedom and free self-determination, faith, culture, and respect for the traditions,” the minister mentioned as the foundations for that path. “This is the path of survival for us, one which Europe should return to before it is too late,” he added.