Janos Lazar

SUBOTICA - After eight years, a rail line between the Serbian city of Subotica and the Hungarian city of Szeged was reinstated on Tuesday.

To mark the occasion, Serbian Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Goran Vesic welcomed his Hungarian counterpart Janos Lazar at the Palic railway station near Subotica.

BELGRADE - Serbian Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Goran Vesic met with Hungarian counterpart Janos Lazar in Belgrade on Tuesday.

Vesic said a high-speed rail line between Belgrade and Budapest would be completed by 2025 and that it had been agreed that trains would not have to stop at the border.

The controversy over the tax has been rumbling on since June 2014, when the Hungarian parliament passed a law levying a progressive tax on advertising revenues of all media companies, including newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV stations and billboard companies.

Hungary has started to build a second fence along the southern border with Serbia, Reuters reported on Monday, citing Hungarian officials.

This move will "likely to exacerbate criticism from some of the country's European Union partners," the agency said.

Hungary has begun building a second line of fence along its southern border with Serbia, a government spokesman said on Feb. 27, a move likely to exacerbate criticism from some of the country's European Union partners.

Hungary is ready to erect another barrier on its borders to deter a flow of migrants, this time on the border with Romania, a senior official has said.

"We are ready and capable of setting up yet another border fence within a short period of time," Janos Lazar, chief of staff to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, said at a news conference on Thursday, according to portfolio.hu

Hungary said on Tuesday will send several thousand police officers to its southern border with Serbia to deter migrant influx, international news outlets reported on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff, Janos Lazar, said the deployment of police was needed because of "increasingly aggressive migrants arriving with more resolute demands," according to AP.

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban doesn't plan to reintroduce the death penalty, his chief of staff Janos Lazar said on Thursday.

The statement came after the head of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker warned Orban would be in for "a fight" if he considered restoring capital punishment which is outlawed in the EU.

European Commissioner for Regional Policy Corina Cretu discussed the Interreg V-A Romania-Hungary cross-border cooperation programme on Monday with Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu. She offered her mediation between the governments in Bucharest and Budapest to unblock this programme.

Photo credit: (c) ALEX MICSIK / AGERPRES FLOW