Peace is paramount to us Hungarians, to Europe and to the world, and there is no alternative, the Hungarian state secretary for national policy said at the 31st Balvanyos Free Summer University and Student Camp in Tusnadfurdo, Transylvania. The Carpathian Basin's large-scale intellectual workshop reopened after a two-year hiatus using the motto “Some things are eternal.”

“There is a great need now to find things that are eternal, things that can serve as points of reference in this uncertain and changing world,” Zsolt Nemeth, chairman of the Hungarian parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee told the opening ceremony of the 31st Balvanyos Free Summer University and Student Camp, referring to its motto.

There are problems in the world and we have reasons to worry, he said, but

“we are not here in Tusvanyos for the world to leave these problems and concerns behind, but to find the appropriate approach and the appropriate solutions.

That’s why it was a good decision to chose the motto “Some things are eternal.”

State Secretary for National Policy Arpad Janos Potapi recalled that the first Balvanyos Free Summer University was organised in 1990, at the time of the regime change. Since then, many fruitful ideas and thoughts have been born here, which have also had a major impact on national policy, he said, pointing out that

several of these thoughts and ideas have become reality over the decades: thoughts conceived at Tusvanyos led to legislation, fundamental law and to practices that allow us to say that the past 12 years are perhaps one of the most beautiful and successful periods in the life of Hungary and the Hungarian nation.

The next year in terms of national policy begins in Tusvanyos, the state secretary said. This is where we will now lay down the foundations of our national policy for 2023, he added, highlighting that

for us, for Hungarians and for Europe and the world, the most important thing is peace and there is no other alternative.

In the spring of 2020, when they formulated the motto of the 31st Tusvanyos event, they did not yet know what the next two years would bring, during which the world saw radical changes, said Tibor T. Toro, executive president of the Hungarian People’s Party of Transylvania. However, they did not change the motto due to events – the pandemic, the crisis and the war – taking place in the past two years, as it was a good choice to keep the old motto „Some things are eternal”. Without this foothold, we would not know how to continue building the future, he said.

Now, when we must face so many challenges, the best thing is that we have something to lean back on: we must revisit our fundamental values and roots to see where we must track back to be able to plan and build a future.