PM Orban: War or Peace is the Campaign's Most Important Question

There is nothing that can create peace like sports, Hungary's prime minister said on Saturday at the inauguration of the new sport hall in Mezohegyes.

PM Viktor Orban, th epresident of Fidesz, delivers a speech at the inauguration of the new sports hall in Mezohegyes on May 25, 2024. Next to him is Minister of Construction and Transport Janos Lazar (Photo: PM's Press Office/Benko Vivien Cher)

– If children do not play sports, if they are not in a community and do not learn to perform their duties, if they do not learn about work and humility, then it won't work, Mr Orban emphasized.

This is why this the stadium isn't merely a sports hall, but the biggest help for parents, he said.

The developments in Mezohegyes serve the goal of ensuring that locals living here do not feel like third-class citizens compared to those living in more developed regions, Janos Lazar said, when he and PM Orban inaugurated the new sports hall.

Hungary's construction and transport minister, who is also the chairman of the board of trustees of the Future Generation's Land Foundation, the Mezohegyes Menesbirtok trust fund, underlined that 

we did not build the vocational secondary school, the college and the library for ourselves, but for you, so they can be used not just by locals, but also by others living in the wider area.

PM Viktor Orban and Lajos Mocsai, handball master coach and chairman of the board of trustees of the Hungarian University of Physical Education and Sports Sciences, attend the inauguration of the new sports hall in Mezohegyes (Photo: MTI/PM's Press Office/Benko Vivien Cher)

At the beginning of his welcome speech, he emphasized that the only "paying guest "here today was PM Viktor Orban. He also welcomed former handball captain Lajos Mocsai and the fans of the Pick Szeged handball team, who were present at the event.

Tibor Istvan Pap, mayor of the town boasting 4,500 inhabitants in the south of Bekes county, said they were in the best place to show how much the town had developed in the past eight years since the state decided to repurchase the previously privatized stud farm. It provided huge funds to improve the machinery, the stables and the cattle farm, as well as the vocational school, library and sports hall, which all have an impact on the daily lives of the people who live here.

The municipality has also made improvements, with around HUF 4 billion of funding to renovate the nursery, the kindergarten, public spaces and parks, as well as the stormwater drainage system. They also built a new bicycle path using over HUF 2 billion, which also benefits the workers on the stud farm. The next step is to make effective use of these improvements and bring them to life," he explained. 

The sports hall, inaugurated on Saturday, has a floor area of 1,350 square metres, with a total useful floor area of almost three thousand square metres. According to the Menesbirtok website, the facility will house, in addition to the traditional handball and basketball courts, a gym, a fencing pitch with electric scoring machines, a climbing wall with an automatic self-securing system, among other things. The citizens of Mezohegyes will also be able to play sports here, and the bleachers offering 350 seats will also make the building suitable for use as an event center.

The net investment of HUF 3.3 billion was carried out by Build It Engineering Ltd. of Budapest, with Sta-Tech Ltd. of Budapest acting as a subcontractor.

The inauguration of the sports hall was followed by a handball gala match at the venue, where Hungarian handball legends clashed with the "old boys" from Mezohegyes.

Cover photo: PM Viktor Orban and Transport Minister Janos Lazar (Photo:PM's Press Office/Benko Vivien Cher)