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Lauding the awardee, Mr Orbán said the award had gone to the best possible recipient because he was convinced that János Martonyi had done everything he could in order to make Hungary a civic and sovereign country that was respected worldwide.
Throughout his whole life, Mr Martonyi has stood for the idea that the essence of European integration lies in the preservation of national self-identity, and so integration is not possible possible without the strengthening of nations. He turned this doctrine into Hungary’s official Europe policy, the Prime Minister stated.
Mr Orbán said Mr Martonyi’s work “is the same in essence as the country-building efforts of István Széchenyi and Gyula Andrássy, he designated Hungary’s place in the world, and reguided Hungary from the periphery to the realm of educated and respected nations.”
He added that Mr Martonyi as foreign minister had made an invaluable contribution to Hungary’s EU accession and western integration. He was the one who conducted Hungary’s first EU presidency, and meanwhile he always had time for what was closest to his heart, international law and teaching, the Prime Minister said, highlighting that Mr Martonyi’s work “is not just a model for us, but also sets before us a task,” his work has become the standard.
Mr Orbán stressed that they had bestowed the Award for a Civic Hungary for twenty years now, but the value of the award was not determined by the number of years because while traditions were important, it was even more important what the award stood for here and now. “What’s happening here and now is nothing less than that we finally award the person without whom we couldn’t be here today. The Foundation for a Civic Hungary, the audience wouldn’t be here today, and most certainly, the right-wing results of the past thirty years wouldn’t have been achieved either,” he said.
He recalled that in 1994 Fidesz had suffered the most comprehensive defeat in its history, “the Hungarian Right was in pieces, three small parties representing a few percentage points sat in Parliament,” up against the coalition of the socialists and the liberals. He said it became clear at that point in time that they must combine forces, and it was then that Mr Martonyi said that there was a much more important task than combining forces, namely that they must build a civic Hungary, must reshape Hungarian politics, must cleanse the country of “the communist reflexes that had settled upon it.”
They must build not just a party, but a community, a community that can serve as a stable basis for a new political era. With this recognition, Mr Martonyi was ahead of his time. What he raised as a novel idea back then is now a mere trivial thought, the Prime Minister recalled.
He added that in 1998 not only had they won the elections, but “thanks to János Martonyi’s philosophy, after 2010 we also changed culture, the country indeed rid itself of the old socialist reflexes, we transformed our institutions, gave Hungary a new Fundamental Law and built a civic Hungary. Thank you, János Martonyi.”
Mr Orbán highlighted that “during the dark years of communist rule,” only families like the Martonyi Family preserved the old civic ideals.
He also spoke about the fact that a Hungarian can never avoid public life however much they would like to. A Hungarian is known for being compelled to enter the political arena for their principles and ideals, can only enforce their principles and values if they fight for them, and “János Martonyi couldn’t avoid this fate either.” He said while his heart had always been most drawn to teaching and the legal profession, “from time to time, politics found him – and how very lucky we are that it did.” He first became secretary of state in the Antall Government, and then minister in Fidesz Governments. As politician and foreign minister “he did fight for the values and principles that he had brought from home.”
The Prime Minister recalled that Mr Martonyi had been convinced that existence as a nation and the European idea were not only reconcilable, but one assumed the other, and while there had been debates about where the limit between the two lay and how the two could be reconciled, “we somehow always managed to get through the difficulties.”
Based on the laudation of the Foundation for a Civic Hungary, Mr Martonyi earned the award with his efforts made in defining, implementing and supervising Hungary’s foreign policy strategy after the fall of communism, his outstanding intellectual contribution to Hungarian jurisprudence and his commitment to educating future generations of legal scholars.
Mr Martonyi said this event was one of the most important events in his life, and thanked everyone for the award. He recalled that back in the day, there had been much debate about the word ‘civic,’ about whether it conveyed a political content or expressed a dichotomy, but they had eventually realised that this term stood above political categories “because civicness is not a social status, not even a qualification.”
Civicness fundamentally conveys a world view and an attitude, and what is most important is that a civic individual is a person who works for the community, who amalgamates the individual’s interests with the community’s interests and the enforcement of communal interests. Therefore, being a civic individual, a citizen is fundamentally an attitude, a spirit and a moral, he explained.
The Foundation for a Civic Hungary is a party foundation of the Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Alliance. At the award ceremony, President of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for a Civic Hungary Ádám Kavecsánszki said they “pay special attention to individuals who earn the Foundation’s recognition with their personal dedication to values and performance.” He said we rarely praise people and set individual performance as an example for ourselves; this is one of the reasons why the Foundation for a Civic Hungary established awards “because these awards are beacons for the community.”
