Hungary's Government Spokesperson has held talks on Hungary’s main economic goals and the challenges facing the European Union in Canada.
Zoltán Kovács met with Members of Parliament, influential businesspeople, the directors of research institutes and opinion formers in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, and in Toronto.
In Ottawa’s Global Affairs Institute, Kovács held discussions with the Institute’s leading officials on Hungary’s role in Europe and its situation within the European Union.
According to MTI, his negotiating partners included strategy expert, university professor and former diplomat Ferry de Kerckhove, Alberta politician and Conservative Party MP Garnett Genuis, and the Cardus Institute’s Program Director for Law Andrew Bennett.
“Ferry de Kerckhove has an excellent knowledge of both European politics and Hungary, and on this occasion he was primarily interested in the results and achievements of the Hungarian economy, as was Conservative MP Garnett Genuis," Kovács said.
The Government Spokesperson also provided a detailed briefing on the Hungarian Governments’ unique humanitarian initiative, the Hungary Helps program, which provides targeted assistance to persecuted Middle Eastern Christians in the land of their birth contributes to reducing the migration pressure on Europe.
Kovács also met with head of the Canadian Federation of the Chabad Lubavics movement Rabbi Chaim Mendelsohn. At a gala dinner in Ottawa, he also held discussions with Rabbi Moshe Rothman-Tas, who has Hungarian roots.
During his visit to Toronto, Kovács held talks at the C.D. Howe institute, which deals in political research, and had meetings with regional Conservative MPs, and attended a lecture at the University of Toronto.
The government spokesperson explained that during the leacture a heated debate developed as a result of articles that had appeared in the Canadian press, portraying a distorted image of Hungary.
When asked to what extent he had succeeded in convincing the students, Kovács said that “when the moderator closed the lecture and the debate, he declared that my arguments had been stronger and more convincing than theirs”.