I have accepted the honourable invitation of Director General Mária Schmidt and my colleagues and I have established the Institute for a Free Europe (Budapest) within the framework of the Foundation. The establishment of the Institute marks the beginning of a new phase in a long-standing and close cooperation. Our Institute will consist of three people, myself included, but we intend to implement an ambitious programme. We are committed to the principle of European integration based on national sovereignty, we stand for freedom, we reject the idea of a United States of Europe and we agree with Hungary’s Fundamental Law, which states that European cooperation is based on the independence of the Member States, in which sovereignty is not renounced by nations for the benefit of the Union, but excercised jointly through the common institutions.
Some of our major programmes that we will launch in the near future:
– working out an autonomous concept of Europe; since the French Fouchet Plan inspired by President De Gaulle in the 1960s, there has not been a detailed programme for the Union on the basis of national sovereignty, and we want to fill this gap; the plan will also respond to the proposal for reform of the Union drafted last year by Franco-German academics;
– the development of a complex index of sovereignty for the Member States of the European Union, suitable for comparison, and the regular, recurrent assessment of these countries in terms of the exercise of their sovereignty and the threats to it;
– the drafting of a Charter of the Rights of Nations; at present, the only charter in the Union’s statutes is a charter of persons and the lack of such is the source of imbalance and dysfunction in the work of the Union
The progress and results of our work will be shared with the public.
My future personal activities in the framework of the Institute, although they will concern fundamental policy issues, will be of an intellectual, analitical, advisory and professional nature. I intend to place particular emphasis on the areas where my existing knowledge and experience are most helpful: constitutional law and EU law. I am no longer a party member, but I take all the important keystones of my 30-year professional political career for granted, and I am proud to have played a formative role in the creation of a new, free and independent Hungary and to have been one of the first MEPs of our country. A book (of interview) covering my thirty years of political activity, entitled “In the Frontline”, recorded in October 2020, has been completed and will be published in the coming days by the Foundation.
In 2020, my professional political life came to an end, I resigned, I accepted responsibility and I will not return to the difficult and testing battlefield of politics. My political stance however remains unchanged – but it is now the view of not more than one Hungarian patriot only who stands for his own ideas. If I can persuade anyone, I will be glad.
I have used the last four years for intellectual nurture, I have also had to deal with a serious illness. I am renewed now for the new challenges ahead. My future manifestations will be limited to intellectual matters – my privacy is not part of that. I will not make comment on my matters of private nature, not to those related to my resignation in December 2020 either, that is part of my legally protected private life and is no concern of anyone but me and the people close to me.
One element of the public controversy surrounding the incident four years ago goes beyond this private sphere, and I therefore consider it important to reiterate that in opposite to allegations with political ulterior motives I have not consumed drugs, no legal proceeding has been brought against me, and that I have paid a fine to the authorities only for breaching the Covid-restrictions.
I will in future take legal redress for the violation of my private life and reputation in the same way as I have done so far in the last four years. Final judgments have been adopted, damages have been paid by the offenders, and fines of millions of forints have been imposed by the authorities in recent years. Legal protection of the privacy is in effect in Hungary and it is not worth it for anybody to violate the private rights financially either. I expect them to be respected.
Budapest, 5 November 2024
József Szájer