Dr. Karl Lamers visits Budapest and completes a full round of discussions with high-level government officials and dignitaries Dr. Karl A. Lamers

Upon his arrival, Dr. Lamers was treated to a reception and formal dinner at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences hosted by the Hungarian Atlantic Council and Prof. Dr. E. Sylvester Vizi. This was a jovial and pleasant interface with the Vice-Presidents of the Council as well. All kinds of interesting new topics emerged at the dinner table, including the introduction of a so-called special NATO lane at airports throughout the world, particularly in the United States, but also in Europe to ease on long waiting times before visitors are able to be processed to their country of arrival. This would be in addition to already existing EU lanes as Ms. Reka Szemerkenyi suggested. This idea was so intriguing to dr. Lamers that he promised to bring it up at their next executive summit. Vice Presidents Ms. Agnes Szentivanyi and Mr. Adam Topolansky asked about Heidelberg and the general state of affairs in Baden Württemberg, where all three of them (Lamers, Szentivanyi and Topolansky) spent some time in the past.

Most importantly, during his visit, dr Lamers had a chance to visit the Hungarian Parliament, where he was received by Mr. Zsolt Csampa, Vice-President of the Hungarian Parliament’s Defense and Security Committee. Following this, dr. Lamers was escorted by Prof. Vizi to meet with the Foreign Minister of Hungary, Janos Martonyi and Defense Minister, Csaba Hende. Beyond euro-atlantic relations, the parties also discussed German-Hungarian bilateral relations as well, due to dr. Lamers’ earlier positions in the Bundestag.

A prominent stop of the visit was a lecture delivered by dr. Lamers at the Zrinyi Miklos National Defense University, where young members of the Hungarian Youth Atlantic Council received him as well.

The motto of the lecture was the Shaping of NATO’s new Strategic Concept. In the lecture, dr. Lamers referred to playful criticism that NATO „was an old, rusty lady”. He retorted that NATO may look like an elegant lady, but is certainly not rusty or old. He said that NATO is 60 years old now, but is full of youthful energy. In addition, it is the only functioning security system in the world. NATO, added, is perhaps equally as important as a political organization in addition to being a military one.

Dr. Lamers referred respectfully to the recently fallen Hungarian heroes in Afghanistan. He added that an exit strategy was in place to pull out all forces by 2014.

Both Prof Vizi and dr. Lamers pointed out that new security threats developed in the 21 century since the infamous terror attacks against the World Trade Center in 2001. Among these could be listed cyber crime and the cutting of energy supplies as a blackmail measure by leading petroleum producing countries.

Dr. Lamers finished his lecture poiting out that NATO has expanded from a 19-member organization to a 28-member super-organization. NATO has an open door policy, which leads the way for many new countries to join upon fulfilling some important criteria. Croatia and Albania are the newest members of NATO and Macedonia may be next.