Hungary's President Laszlo Solyom had a particularly busy schedule this year, including several visits abroad and tours in Hungary, a senior official of the Presidential Office told MTI on Saturday.

The president paid official visits to 13 countries, and made further nine trips abroad to attend conferences or meet ethnic Hungarian minorities in neighbouring countries, head of division Ferenc Kumin said.

The president's efforts to improve Hungarian-Slovak relations and the situation of Slovakia's ethnic Hungarian minority were crowned by a summit meeting with Slovak President Ivan Gasparovic in Nove Zamky, SW Slovakia, earlier this month. The main achievement of the summit was the two presidents' agreement on the need to ease tensions in bilateral relations, he said.

In a move to preserve the rule of law, President Solyom returned several laws to Parliament for reconsideration, and submitted four laws to the Constitutional Court for a preliminary review, Kumin said.

A green-minded president, Solyom continued to tour Hungary's national parks in 2008 to intensify efforts on protecting the ecological assets of the nation, he said.

Among other achievements of 2008, Kumin mentioned that Solyom had set up a "Council of Elders" for developing education and tackling corruption in the country, and continued to host a series of conferences on Hungarians beyond the border in the 21st century.