Hungary’s Prime Minister Orban caused outrage within the EU with an unplanned trip to Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin. Now the EU’s chief diplomat has made a controversial decision.
In response to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s trips to Moscow and Beijing, EU chief diplomat Josep Borrell has announced a boycott of a foreign ministers’ meeting planned by Hungary in Budapest. Instead, he will invite them to a meeting in Brussels after the end of the summer break, the Spaniard announced in Brussels.
Borrell made the decision after a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels and against the declared will of countries such as Germany, Spain and Luxembourg. It was initially unclear what concrete consequences it would have. Borrell said he had tried to achieve agreement among the EU states on the procedure. Unfortunately, this was not possible. The decision also affects an informal meeting of the defense ministers of the EU states, which was also supposed to take place in Budapest in the last week of August. Borrell is also responsible for this issue in the EU.
At the foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels on Monday, a whole series of participants clearly opposed Borrell’s proposal to boycott discussions in the Hungarian capital. Luxembourg’s foreign minister Xavier Bettel, for example, called it nonsense and advocated travelling to Budapest to make his opinion clear to the Hungarian government. Countries such as Spain and Slovenia also clearly opposed Borrell’s proposal.
Behind the scenes, according to diplomats, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) and representatives of countries such as France and Italy also expressed similar views. On the other side, however, were countries from northeastern Europe such as Poland. In response to Orban’s solo actions, Lithuania and Sweden had already announced days ago that they would temporarily not send any ministers to meetings in Hungary.
According to Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, a compromise proposal was briefly put forward on Monday to organize the foreign ministers’ meeting planned by Hungary in Ukraine, which has been attacked by Russia. However, this failed because Hungary would have had to agree.
Discussion has been going on for days
The EU’s possible reactions to Orban’s meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, China’s head of state and party leader Xi Jinping and former US President Donald Trump have been discussed for days. They are considered particularly annoying because Hungary currently holds the rotating EU Council Presidency. There are fears that the impression will arise abroad that Orban is speaking on behalf of the European Union at meetings. In terms of content, the main criticism is that the trip to Putin in particular could be seen as a concession.
Orban speaks of “peace mission”
Borrell called Orban’s actions at the foreign ministers’ meeting “completely unacceptable” and recalled the principle of loyal cooperation enshrined in the EU treaties. According to this, member states actively and unconditionally support the Union’s foreign and security policy in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity.
Borrell also referred to statements made by Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, who recently gave the impression in a speech to the UN Security Council that the EU was fuelling the war in Ukraine through its policies and arms deliveries.
Orban speaks of a “peace mission”. The Hungarian has long held the view that the political course of the EU and NATO could lead to an expansion of the war beyond Ukraine. From Ukraine’s point of view, however, negotiations are pointless as long as Russia shows no willingness to withdraw from the occupied territories.
Hungarian minister flexes his muscles
In a letter to EU Council President Charles Michel after his trips, Orban wrote that the EU should now take the initiative and hold talks with China about a possible major peace conference. At the same time, diplomatic communication with Russia, which had been suspended because of the war in Ukraine, should be resumed.
German Foreign Minister Baerbock did not respond to these demands at the foreign ministers’ meeting. She criticized the trips as “ego trips” that had caused irritation among many actors around the world.
Szijjarto published a photo of himself at the foreign ministers’ meeting, showing him in a tight T-shirt and with a well-trained upper body. He wrote that he was travelling to Brussels wearing a political bulletproof vest and was prepared for a political “firefight”. He accused his counterparts of being frustrated by the failure of their own Ukraine policy. He also pointed out that there had been numerous other talks since Orban’s “peace mission” – including between the defense ministers of the USA and Russia and between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump.
EU information on the meeting
Source: Stern
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