János Martonyi

Who is János Martonyi?

János Martonyi is a Hungarian politician, current Foreign Minister of Hungary. He is a member of the Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Union party, and was also Foreign Minister between 1998 and 2002. More recently he was part of the Amato Group that unofficially drafted a new treaty for the European Union after the European Constitution was rejected by the French and Dutch voters.

He was a member of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party. In April 2007, Hungarian journalist Péter Kende reported in a weekly newspaper that Martonyi delivered reports to the Hungarian secret police in the 1960s, and that secret police files confirmed this. According to the files, Martonyi wrote among other things reports on the Hungarian emigrant scene in Germany and France.

On 29 May 2010 he was reappointed as Minister of Foreign Affairs. His most prominent tasks are the development of a strong and effective foreign policy, and planning for Hungarian Presidency of the European Union from January to July 2011. He visited Slovakia before his inauguration on the occasion of the passing of the Hungarian law allowing citizenship to be given to Hungarians living in neighboring countries. The Slovak government has considered the new law to be an aggressive move, with insufficient negotiation between the two countries. Martonyi said that hysteria in Slovakia is a result of the election campaign there.