Presidents celebrate Hungarian-Polish Friendship Day

Budapest, March 19 (MTI) – Hungarian President János Áder and Andrzej Duda, his Polish counterpart, addressed a celebration in Budapest on Saturday, marking the day dedicated to the friendship between their peoples.

In his address, Áder said that both the Polish and Hungarians are committed to a strong Europe and believe that the strength of Europe lies in freedom-loving peoples such as they are.

Áder noted upcoming commemorations to mark the 60th anniversary of the anti-communist uprising in Poland’s Poznan in June 1956 and Hungary’s anti-Soviet revolution four months later and said that the two peoples would commemorate “their long fights and heroic moments” together.

Concerning developments in 1956, Áder said that “the Polish example filled Hungarians with enthusiasm”, and the “painful disappointment and burning desire for freedom” led to the revolution.

Stalinist dictatorship was doomed to failure because it “did not grasp the strength of empathy and solidarity; it failed to understand that those values make a nation a community, and that nation will become stronger than any dictatorship or occupying power,” Áder insisted.

Duda said that Europe was in a crisis of values, those values that European civilisation is built on. But Hungary and Poland are committed to saving those values and re-establishing them in Western Europe, he said.

Referring to 1956, Duda said that both Hungary’s revolution and the Poznan uprising demonstrated that neither people will succumb to oppression and will reject being stripped of values by which their families had lived for generations.

Polish President Duda meets with the Hungarian House Speaker and he also meets with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.