HVG: We were sorry to hear that the Soros Foundation is closing down in Hungary. We hope other Soros institutions won't go the same way.
GS: Absolutely not. The Central European University's endowment has been raised to €400m, from which the university can draw €20m each year. That sum can grow by up to3 per cent a year. We gave a boost to the CEU's business school as well, advancing it €20m, but they can support themselves from tuition fees in the long run. And the Open Society Institute in Budapest, which has an annual budget of $400m, retains a central goal. Programmes outside the United States will continue to be launched, coordinated and financed from Budapest.
Budapest will remain its hub.
HVG: One major initiative is the integration of the Roma of Central and Eastern Europe. We've heard that you recently held talks in Prague about improving the conditions of life of Czech Roma.
GS: Paroubek, the Czech prime minister accepted my proposal to launch a government programme to integrate the Roma, using EU cash. If all goes to plan, we could see an end to Roma ghettos in the Czech Republic within ten years. After Budapest, I'm heading to Bucharest, with the same aim. They also have programmes, and they're aiming to focus on education, health, employment and accommodation for the Roma.
Local authorities in Romania have enormous responsibilities - they have to make progress in these four areas, eventually getting rid of those closed Roma ghettos. Events in France show how urgent this is.
Of course, Slovak Roma are in the worst position - and they are constantly emigrating to the Czech Republic and Hungary, exporting their problems beyond the borders. I hope to have discussions with leaders in Slovakia soon.
HVG: Do you believe that the Roma could turn to violence in the same way as the residents of French council estates?
GS: For the time being, violence against the Roma is the norm.
Prejudice is still deep-rooted, and it would be good if public opinion in the region could recognise that it was in the public interest to make sure that there be no "Roma question", to get rid of the ghettos.
It's a sad paradox that integrated Roma are accepted as non-Roma, but prejudice still dogs ghetto-dwellers. Hungary is no exception in this.
HVG: But the parties have recognised that the half-million strong Roma minority could decide the outcome of elections, and they're making efforts to win their votes.
GS: Maybe so, but the prejudices have hardly changed. I had a terrible experience. During the Nazi occupation, a brave, deeply religious woman hid my mother, and I also spent the summer of 1944 with her. The woman is now 90, and I recently visited her. She said she read the Magyar Nemzet, as she had done since before the war, and she listened to Magyar Radio. This good, honourable woman came out with brutally anti-Roma statements. She thought Roma lived off benefit hand-outs, that they were exploiting the country's readiness to help. Anyone who denied this was betraying the country, she said. Such views are popular in other European countries. In Bulgaria, for example, the ultranationalist Ataka (Attack) party became the fourth largest parliamentary party on the back of an anti-Roma manifesto, and its popularity is growing fast.