During a meeting of the Hungarian Atlantic Council (MAT) late on Thursday, Gergely Gulyás, Head of the Prime Minister's Office, said peace will be beneficial, especially if Europe, similarly to Hungary, finds common ground with the United States.

Receiving the body’s Antall József Prize for supporting the Transatlantic concept and aiding the council's work, Gulyás told the body’s general assembly that the change of government in the US had been a "relief" for Hungary as the previous Democrat administration had been "expressly unfriendly".

Gulyás said "the US does not want to protect Europe" and expects the bloc to develop its defense capabilities, which have been neglected for decades".

Meanwhile, referring to József Antall, Hungary’s first prime minister after the fall of communism, Gulyás said he worked at a time when "respect was the ruling tone of public life ... that has ceased, it is no more". "That is a serious hit to democracy," he said.

Lauding Gulyás, Zsolt Németh, the head of parliament’s foreign policy committee and the MAT vice-president, said the minister had a "nationalist, Christian, conservative and protestant set of values" and was "an operative problem-solver" who played a role in "protecting the victims of the events of 2006, creating the Fundamental Law, or fostering Hungary’s crucial relations with German-speaking states."