Hungarian Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai gave an interview today to CNBC and spoke at length about how Hungary averted a financial meltdown in late 2008. CNBC spoke with Bajnai, the country’s interim centre-left prime minister, on Kossuth Square, right outside Parliament. The network’s reporter opened the interview by noting that the crisis in Hungary peaked just over a year ago, when interest rates rose to as high as 11 percent and when the former economic power-house of Central Europe had to turn to the International Monetary Fund, in order to obtain a $25 billion loan. At the time, Bajnai served as Hungary’s economy minister, but ascended to the prime ministership following the sudden resignation of his Socialist predecessor, Ferenc Gyurcsány, this past spring.

A new website entitled Visegrad-4 was launched earlier this week and it aims to serve as an independent English-language news source for Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The site notes that these East/Central European states share a common historical heritage, each of them having been impacted by pre-World War I empires, Soviet influence and a dramatic transition to democracy and free market economy in 1989. Twenty years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the re-introduction of multi-party democracy, the member states of the Visegrad Group should aim for greater cooperation and alignment of policies when negotiating with other […]