Under the motto “Make Europe Great Again”, Hungary assumed the Presidency of the Council of the EU for the period from 1 July 2023 to 31 December 2024.

A special feature of the Hungarian Presidency is the timeframe that coincided with the start of a newly established European Parliament and European Commission as well as the start of the implementation of the Strategic Agenda 2024–2029 (→separate news item), setting out the long-term guidelines for the EU’s future work.

In its programme, Hungary defined the following priorities for its Presidency:

• Adopting a new European Competitiveness Deal;
• Reinforcing European defence policy;
• Stemming illegal migration;
• Shaping the future of cohesion policy;
• Addressing demographic challenges;
• A farmer-oriented EU agricultural policy;
• A consistent and merit-based enlargement policy.

In the domain of Justice and Home Affairs, a focus of the Hungarian Presidency is, inter alia, on strong European borders with a crisis-resilient system and a secure Europe.

The Presidency's aim is to strengthen the resilience of the Schengen Area to crises and to facilitate the finalisation of the Schengen enlargement process. It wishes to improve the resilience of the Common European Asylum System and to encourage Member States to exchange views on innovative solutions in the field of asylum. It also envisages stepping up measures for the effective implementation of returns. It further aims to continue legislative negotiations on revision of the visa suspension mechanism and to initiate a comprehensive review of the European visa waiver regime.

To ensure a secure Europe, the Hungarian Presidency is paying particular attention to the fight against terrorism and organised crime and to operational law enforcement cooperation. It is committed to strengthening law enforcement and judicial cooperation in the prevention, detection, and investigation of smuggling and trafficking of human beings (THB) and to increasing the effectiveness of information exchange.

Next to THB, the Presidency is focusing on the fight against drug trafficking: it will promote the implementation of the EU Drugs Strategy and Action Plan and the EU Roadmap for combating drug trafficking and organised crime.

Other priorities of the Presidency include the fight against illicit trafficking of cultural goods and environmental crime. Regarding cybercrime, the Hungarian Presidency is continuing to work on a long-term legislative solution to prevent and combat online child sexual abuse and on revision of the directive against sexual exploitation of children.

In the field of criminal justice cooperation, the Presidency is continuing to prioritise victim support and the fight against corruption. The continuation of the debate on the future of criminal law and the development of model provisions are another priority of the Hungarian Presidency’s term.