 Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Budapest and welcome to Hungary. I'm so happy to see so many familiar faces in this building of the Central European University, where I graduated actually in 2001 as a historian. Not the same building, but just the building beside this. But at the same time, you have to know that this university is not a university anymore here. This building is not a campus anymore. Unfortunately now it's empty of students and empty of professors, because the CU was forced to leave Budapest and now it relocated to Vienna. And to be in this beautiful but empty building, it also represents where we are in Hungary, you know, that we are sliding from a democratic country to something else. And unfortunately, this same very hostile atmosphere, which the Deputy Mayor was speaking about, is also felt in the drug scene in the harm reduction area. So among other things, harm reduction is also a taboo word now in Hungary. So if you really want to get some, secure some funding from the government, you don't even use the word harm reduction. And you know, at the same university we had drug policy summer schools every year for many years. And we always took the students to a vibrant harm reduction scene to visit sites. And as it was mentioned before, several of these programs just closed down. So they don't exist anymore. And only a few services are left to keep harm reduction alive. And the civil society organizations often feel isolated and intimidated. So that's why your presence is also very important. If you walk in Budapest today, or yesterday you walked on the streets of Budapest, you just see, you know, the trendy cafes and the shiny surface of a, let's say, normal European country, but you don't see beyond the surface. And you know, some very frightening things are happening in this country, which we call the shrinking space. We can call it the shrinking space for civil society. So there is like less space for organizations like mine. It often scapegoated as foreign agents. And there is less space to sing, to educate, to care about other people. And just right now, for example, the government is creating a new law just to monitor civil society organizations that are critical to the government because they say that they are in danger of the sovereignty of the country. And just another example, speaking about LGBTQ issues in schools is prohibited in Hungary now. So yeah, there are some really negative trends. As a filmmaker with my colleague Istvan, we had the opportunity to travel to many countries and to interview key stakeholders in many of the countries you came from. So we had a chance to have insights to how drug policies are made in other countries. Catherine also mentioned that this year, together with Correlation, we conducted a study, a focus group study in four countries. I will speak about that later in the afternoon. So I really had a kind of opportunity to have an insight into drug policies in different parts of Europe. And we live in quite different realities in Europe. Sometimes I feel that we live in parallel universes in Europe. The challenges and the opportunities are quite different in different parts of Europe. In some parts of Europe, especially in the West, but I also include here Czech Republic and Slovenia. Now, the real question is how you mainstream harm reduction. And the real question is innovation. So how you introduce innovative harm reduction programs. And it's like even in the northern part of Europe where there was a very strong abstinence culture, now you see that things are changing to the positive direction. There are new drug consumption rooms and even in Iceland and Norway, which were very like bastions of abstinence culture before. So we see a lot of positive trends. At the same time, if you go to the eastern part of Europe, you still see that the question is not innovation or mainstreaming. The question is still the question of Hamlet to be or not to be. So it's like a question of survival for harm reduction. And after the retreat of international donors, several very important programs were just collapsed in the region. So we have many empty seats where people could sit now who were working for programs which don't exist anymore, harm reduction programs. So we have to be aware of that as well. And of course, the war in Ukraine just complicated the things further. So some of the harm reductionists in the Eastern Europe, they actually fight for their lives and not for just funding. And even though the Iron Curtain, which separated the Eastern West, collapsed many years ago, but there is still an invisible Iron Curtain when it comes to innovation and harm reduction. So if you look like there are drug checking services or you look at the map like drug checking services, drug consumption rooms, how many drug consumption rooms you see in the Eastern part of Europe, not many. So and you know the real problem is that innovation would be very badly needed also here in this part of Europe because the drug scene is changing very rapidly. So when I started to work in this field in the early 2000s, most harm reduction programs were focusing on like white, middle-aged, heterosexual, male, heroin, injectors. And now this is changing. So, you know, there are new drugs are coming, new groups of people entering drug use with different routes of drug use, completely different context and quite new patterns. So there are new psychotic substances, crack cocaine, smoking, snorting, minorities, elderly people, chem sex, deep web markets. So there are a lot of new challenges and new opportunities as well. So it's like, I think we are in a crucial time where we have to also define what harm reduction is about and offer something relevant to people who are not the, you know, the usual crowd of our services like not, you know, white male, heroin injectors. So how can we offer something relevant? And that's why we need a lot of innovation and out-of-the-box thinking. You know, when harm reduction was created back in the 80s, 90s, then it was done from out-of-the-box thinking. Like, you know, first needle exchanges opened in a toilet and it was like a guerrilla creativity, urban creativity of people who were really trying to find solutions. And I think we can apply the same principles of pragmatism and compassion to this new phenomenon, new kind of drugs, new kind of groups of people to offer them something relevant, which is maybe not needles, but something else, and something which is relevant in the east and the west and the north and the south. So maybe we should think outside of the usual HIV prevention and overdose prevention box sometimes. So harm reduction is so much more than just needles and medicines and overdoses. So for me, harm reduction is a different way to ask questions from people. So not to ask, like, what's wrong with you, but ask what happened to you. And not to ask, can you become someone else who can be helped? But you ask, how can I help you now at where you are? So that's a very different approach. And this is what is the core of harm reduction. And the harm reduction is not possible without a very living connection to the community of people who use drugs. We are human beings. We are born to create connections with each other. And if we are isolated, we just can't work and we die. And in many countries, I don't see these connections, even though the harm reduction system is quite advanced. So even when I go to the west to film, I see some countries where there is an advanced health system and services are available. But you don't really see the connection to the community, to the people who they serve. And it's sometimes the harm reduction system is organized in a very top-down way. And programs are operated by smarts and humanists, but still technocrats who have sometimes no real idea what's really happening on the scene on the ground. And so we need this kind of living connection. We need to support communities to self-organize. And we need correlations, as this network is about correlations of different fields, different professionals, disciplines, and different levels of decision-making. Even in Hungary, where we are now, there is a very hostile atmosphere, but you can find opportunities to work with some communities, some decision-makers. You could see with the deputy mayor, with the city of Budapest, we could establish a good corporation that's an opposition leadership now in the city of Budapest. And I'm the head of the working group on harm reduction in this drug forum of Budapest. And we have been working with the city to create a new drug strategy now, even if the city has not much resources, but it has some symbolic support, at least to people working in this field. And it creates a platform for us to speak about issues and challenges, and just two weeks ago, we debated the Budapest drug strategy, the draft with the chief of the police, the Budapest police, who's very much against harm reduction. We discussed it for two hours. So it's a great opportunity to educate the police about harm reduction. Or this meeting just created an opportunity for us, together with Euroemputs, to organize a workshop for people who use drugs. We don't have an organization of people who use drugs in Hungary. So we invited clients of OAT programs. Surprisingly, nine people showed up, very enthusiastic people, and we could create the first network of people who use drugs. Yeah, it's still informal, but let's hope that it will grow something formal, as well, and permanent one. So I really see that there is a power in communities, even in dark times. I think we can believe in that. And regardless of all these different realities we live in, we have more or less the same struggles everywhere, the same everyday struggles. Very boring. You have to mention why harm reduction works, as Toni said, the thousands of times. And you are so bored that you have to use the same arguments to the same stupid country arguments. And you can really get consumed by this everyday struggle. And it's also sometimes it's easy to forget our own mission, like it's about reminding the society that people use drugs are people. That's a very simple thing, but it's very easy to oversee or overlook that. And it's difficult to stay motivated in these everyday gray struggles. So yesterday we had a lot of discussions, what correlation is good for us and how correlation can contribute to the work we do. And of course, I believe that there are many things like the data collection and technical support and research and training and all this stuff. And I believe that's very useful and important for us. At the same time, the main benefit for me to participate in this network and participate at events like this is to be reminded after this everyday struggles, this gray time that we are not alone. So we are part of something bigger. And also we can speak to people who understand each other. And we can speak to people who finish the sentence after you because they know what you think about. And also we come here to make new connections and correlations. And sometimes that's in disinformal conversations are the most important. So thank you for coming here and please recharge your batteries before going home and continue the everyday struggles you are in. I love you. Thank you very much.