General Denis Mercier praises Hungarian armed forces development programme

On 28 February, Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT) Denis Mercier arrived in Hungary for a two-day official visit. The last time the general visited Hungary was during the NATO Transformation Seminar held in Budapest last March. During this year’s visit, he met and had discussions with Minister of Defence Dr. István Simicskó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó and Chief of Defence General Dr. Tibor Benkő.

On Thursday, General Mercier held a lecture for students at the National University of Public Service, in which he talked about the strategic aspects of NATO’s transformation activities. He gave an overview of the history of the North Atlantic Alliance and the changing challenges that NATO had to face, as well as the paradigm changes caused by the transforming security environment, with special regard to the recently arising difficulties. He also highlighted the importance of proper human resources management in the nations’ armed forces.

After his lecture, in an interview to honvedelem.hu, the general said that he had made his previous visit in the framework of an event of a different character, during which the topics of discussion concerned the Alliance as a whole, so in contrast to the last occasion, this time he had more opportunities to learn about Hungary’s priorities and standpoint on several issues. At the same time, he added that this year’s discussions, too, have clearly shown that last year’s excellently organized seminar was quite useful. As he said, while holding very frank and deep discussions with the Minister of Defence and the Chief of Defence, he was given a glimpse into the way Hungary manages the current security threats, which has special significance. “NATO is made up of 29 nations, and all these nations, including Hungary, are equally important. The region where Hungary is located is not an easy one, because it has access to two conflict zones, the Balkans area and Ukraine", General Mercier emphasized.

The Supreme Allied Commander Transformation praised Hungary’s pledge to increase its defence budget to 2 per cent of the GDP until 2024. “Hungary is doing this very cleverly, because it is not only about the increasing defence budget. We need to look at the full plan, in which the defence capabilities needed by the Hungarian Defence Forces and NATO are first carefully considered, and then we must make sure that the development priorities of Hungary also meet NATO’s priorities", the general said. He added that besides this topic, he also discussed with his Hungarian partners the activity of the MoD Defence Technology Research Centre, which is especially important from the viewpoint of the NATO ACT. The aims of this centre are to develop the armed forces and military equipment, facilitate continuous innovation and modernize the Hungarian defence industry in accordance with the aims of the Zrínyi 2026 National Defence and Armed Forces Development Program.

General Denis Mercier told us that he had worked together with many Hungarian officers, and he could only speak about all of them in the highest terms. He added that he considers the uniform system at the National University of Public Service an excellent initiative, as the future military officers are trained at the university together with the personnel to serve with the Ministry of the Interior and civilians preparing for other areas of public service. Due to the complexity of the world today, we cannot completely separate officer training from other areas because everybody needs comprehensive and modern knowledge, the general emphasized. He also praised the system of NCO training in Hungary. As he said, there is general agreement in the Alliance about the need to strengthen the NCO system, and Hungary provides one of the best examples of its implementation in practice.

The general’s advice to future officers and NCOs is that they must always keep in mind that they will not be able to solve the problems alone. It is always very important that they should work together with their colleagues, and that they must not be afraid of failure because they can learn from it and do better afterwards. “They will always have huge day-to-day work, but they need always to look ahead, and to look at the future. If they don’t look ahead, they may be surprised", General Mercier said.