The Netherlands and Hungary - Hungary

The historical ties between the Netherlands and Hungary go back a long way. Queen Consort Mary of Hungary acted as Governor of the Netherlands from 1531 until 1555. She managed to create a sense of unity between the provinces, while securing for them a measure of independence from both France and the Holy Roman Empire.

During the Counter-Reformation in the Habsburg Empire, numerous Hungarian students went to study in the Netherlands at universities in Franeker, Utrecht, Groningen and Leiden.

A century later, on the 11th of February 1676, Admiral Michiel de Ruyter was able to rescue 32 Hungarian Protestant preachers from galley slavery in Naples; a statue of Admiral De Ruyter with a plaque of his ship can still be found on Calvin Square behind the Great Reformed Church in Debrecen.

 
After the First World War, the so-called “children`s trains” brought some 32.000 undernourished, orphaned or otherwise traumatized Hungarian children to the Netherlands, where they were hosted by Dutch families for several months or years; based on these ties, some Hungarian and Dutch families are still in touch.

 Following the 1956 uprising, approx. 4,000 Hungarian refugees arrived in the Netherlands, where Queen Julianna delivered a warm-hearted radio message to them on the 15th of November. During the weeks of the uprising, Dutch people expressed their solidarity at demonstrations in Amsterdam, Utrecht and The Hague. When the uprising was defeated, locals in Amsterdam tore off the street sign of Stalinlaan and renamed it Vrijheidslaan.

The Netherlands, a founding member of both NATO and the EU, was happy to welcome Hungary as a NATO Ally in 1999 and an EU Member State in 2004.