Sales by Mercedes-Benz Manufacturing Hungary Ltd. were close to EUR one billion in its first partial year of production. According to company court data, only a fraction, EUR 2.5 million, was realized from the Hungarian market.

The Hungarian-Israeli Joint Economic Committee met for the second time in Jerusalem on May 29 to discuss the possibilities of developing cooperation between the two countries. The first meeting of this Joint Commission was held in 2009, in Budapest.

23-year-old Hungarian international Zsanett Jakabfi is member of the German side VFL Wolfsburg that has won the UEFA Champions League in women’s football against Olympique Lyonnais - a rare piece of success for a Hungarian footballer nowadays.

Zsolt Erõss, 45, the first Hungarian to scale Mount Everest, is feared dead on Nepal’s treacherous Kangchenjunga mountain, according to local tourism officials. Four others, including Hungarian Péter Kiss, 27, are also feared to have died.

Located at the crossroads of Europe, Croatia has some 5,835 kilometers of coastline coupled with Mediterranean-style culture and food, not to mention seven UNESCO World Heritage sites, including the Old City of Dubrovnik and the Plitvice Lakes National Park.

A Hungarian bobtail named Jimmy has won the ‘Best in Show’ title at the World Dog Show 2013 in Budapest, which featured 18,000 dogs from 70 countries. One of his owners is also a champion: 2004 modern pentathlon Olympic gold medalist Zsuzsa Vörös.

Kristijan Sabo, the new Managing Director (MD) of Podravka International Ltd., is spending his first weeks in Hungary, learning about his new business environment. He talks to Diplomacy & Trade about the work that awaits him in this position.

Portuguese soccer club SL Benfica lost the Europa League final this Wednesday night to English side FC Chelsea and the superstitious believe this loss – and the six defeats in European cup finals before – is due to a curse by legendary Hungarian coach Béla Guttmann.

The Hungarian Ministry of Human Resources (EMMI) has issued a statement on Minister Zoltán Balog’s trip to China this week. Minister Balog signed a bilateral cultural cooperation agreement with in the Chinese capital, Beijing this Tuesday.

This year, Corinthia Hotel Budapest commemorates the 10th anniversary of its reopening. A major series of celebrations are staged throughout the year, the latest event being the Open Day on May 26 during which the hotel can be visited by the general public.

The American International School Budapest is an independent, nonprofit coeducational day school for students from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade. The campus stands on 13.1 hectares of land, some 13 kilometers from Budapest, in Nagykovácsi.

This summer, Croatia joins the European Union as the 28th member of the organization. The Croatian Ambassador to Hungary, Gordan Grliæ-Radman talked to an earlier issue of Diplomacy & Trade in an interview covering various aspects of bilateral relations

The Hungarian Minister of National Economy Mihály Varga announced that in order to ensure that the European Commission’s excessive deficit procedure against the country is lifted, the government will freeze HUF 92.9 billion in the 2013 budget.

A dozen people in the small southern Hungarian village of Geresdlak, Baranya County, start a Finnish language course financed by the European Union. They wish to talk the language of the increasing number of immigrants from Finland.

On the occassion of the May 3rd Constitution National Day, the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland to Hungary, Roman Kowalski invited hundreds of guests to the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
In his speech, Ambassador Kowalski stressed that the day of the 1791 Constitution, the first modern one in Europe, means a lot for the Polish people, they are proud of the anniversary as it reminds of them of the merits gained in the creation of a modern Europe and of modern democracy.
Hungarian Deputy PM Tibor Navracsics was of the view that the Polish constitution is about being Central European. He called for the member countries of the Visegrád Group, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, whose combined GDP would be the world’s 15th, to now form closer cooperation on the economic front “to achieve big results.”