Hungary: Government

Principal Government Officials

Chief of State: President Janos Ader
Head of Government: Prime Minister Viktor Orbán

The president of the republic, elected by the National Assembly every 5 years, has a largely ceremonial role, but powers include requesting the winner of a parliamentary election to form a cabinet. That person then presents his program to Parliament, and is in turn ratified by that body as prime minister. The prime minister selects cabinet ministers and has the exclusive right to dismiss them. Each cabinet nominee appears before one or more parliamentary committees in consultative open hearings and must be formally approved by the president. The unicameral, 386-member National Assembly is the highest state legislative body and initiates and approves legislation sponsored by the prime minister. The number of seats will decrease to 200 for the 2014 election. National parliamentary elections are held every 4 years (the last in April 2010). A party must win at least 5% of the national vote to enter Parliament. An 11-member Constitutional Court may challenge legislation on grounds of unconstitutionality. From January 1, 2012, the Constitutional Court will have 15 members, appointed by a two-thirds vote in Parliament for a 12-year term of office.

FOREIGN RELATIONS
Except for the short-lived neutrality declared by Imre Nagy in November 1956, Hungary's foreign policy generally followed the Soviet lead from 1947 to 1989. During the communist period, Hungary maintained treaties of friendship, cooperation, and mutual assistance with the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Romania, and Bulgaria. It was one of the founding members of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact and Comecon, and it was the first central European country to withdraw from those now-defunct organizations.

As with any country, Hungarian security attitudes are shaped largely by history and geography. For Hungary, this is a history of more than 400 years of domination by great powers--the Ottomans, the Habsburgs, the Germans during World War II, and the Soviets during the Cold War. Hungary's foreign policy priorities, largely consistent since 1990, represent a direct response to these factors. Since 1990, Hungary's top foreign policy goal has been achieving integration into Western economic and security organizations. To this end, Hungary joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in May of 2004. Hungary also has improved its often-chilled neighborly relations by signing basic treaties with Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine. These renounce all outstanding territorial claims and lay the foundation for constructive relations. However, the issue of ethnic Hungarian minority rights in Slovakia and Romania periodically causes bilateral tensions to flare, including in June 2010 when the Parliament offered Hungarian citizenship to ethnic Hungarians living outside its borders. Hungary was a signatory to the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, has signed all of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE)/ Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) follow-on documents since 1989, and served as the OSCE's Chairman-in-Office in 1997. Hungary's record of implementing CSCE Helsinki Final Act provisions, including those on reunification of divided families, remains among the best in eastern Europe. Hungary has been a member of the United Nations since December 1955.

During the first 6 months of 2011, Hungary held for the first time the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. The priorities of the Hungarian presidency, as outlined in its program entitled “Strong Europe,” include the promotion of Roma integration, supporting growth and increasing employment in the EU, expansion of the Schengen border regime area, and the enlargement of the European Union, with special emphasis on Croatia’s accession.

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