Minister: Hungary cannot be bribed or blackmailed

Hungary cannot be bribed or blackmailed because it has its own position that is about the future of Europe, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in an interview with French news channel LCI.

Hungary’s “very principled position”, Szijjártó said, was that European Union accession talks should only start with countries that are prepared and only if the EU itself was prepared. “And we don’t see either of these two when it comes to Ukraine,” he added.

The minister said Hungary had often been accused of using its position on Ukraine as a tactic to gain access to the EU funds that have been withheld from the country, but this was not the case. Hungary’s position, he said was that the European Commission had not prepared the issues concerning Ukraine properly.

He noted that the Hungarian government had condemned Russia’s war against Ukraine on multiple occasions and stood by Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. Hungary, he added, had accepted over a million refugees from Ukraine and 1,300 schools in Hungary had welcomed Ukrainian refugee students. Hungary, Szijjártó said, was also undertaking the largest humanitarian operation in its history in connection with Ukraine.

Szijjártó said Hungary was “absolutely in favour” of tighter and more effective cooperation between the EU and Ukraine and was arguing in favour of a discussion among EU member states on the bloc’s strategic vision concerning the future of the relationship between the EU and Ukraine. “But we don’t see that accession talks would be the appropriate milestone now,” he added.

Put to him that the Hungarian government was in the minority with this position in the EU, Szijjártó said Hungary was not influenced by the positions of other member states because it respected those positions and wanted its own position to be respected as well.

He said there were certain issues in the EU that required unanimity. “And as long as there’s no unanimity, there’s no decision.”

Asked about relations between Hungary and Russia, Szijjártó said the country had a very rational cooperation with Russia on energy, adding that energy security was in Hungary’s national interest. And energy security, he added, was determined by infrastructure. If gas flows from Russia towards Hungary were interrupted, it would be physically impossible to guarantee Hungary’s energy supply, the minister said, adding that no one could expect Hungary to render its own energy security impossible.