The government announced a zero-tolerance policy towards anti-Semitism, Justice Minister Judit Varga said talking to the Hungarian news agency MTI on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Mrs Varga attended a commemoration at the invitation of the European Jewish Association organised on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps where as head of the Hungarian delegation she laid a wreath at the wall of victims.

The Justice Minister further spoke at a symposium held in Krakow on Monday which was also attended by former Belgian federal Interior Minister Jan Jambon and former President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani.

In her speech, the Minister highlighted that the Hungarian government had announced a zero-tolerance policy towards anti-Semitism. Additionally, she rendered an account of a number of related measures, including that the government incorporated Holocaust denial into the Penal Code as a punishable offence, introduced a memorial day for victims of the Holocaust, and successfully organised the European Maccabi Games.

She said “it is an important result that during its 2015-2016 presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Hungary achieved that the European Union’s new data protection regulation should not restrict access to archive sources related to the Holocaust”.

She added that “In Hungary we respect everyone’s origin and religion”.

Mrs Varga also highlighted that “Europe’s second largest Jewish community lives in Hungary, in peace and in security; in actual fact, in more peace and security than anywhere else in Europe”.

(MTI)