Hungary “refuses to even discuss” the European financing of further weapon deliveries to Ukraine until Kyiv restores the rights of Hungarian minorities in the country and removes Hungarian bank OTP from the list of international financers of the war, the foreign minister said on Thursday.
The discussion on the war again made it clear that the voice of peace must be strengthened, “because the overwhelming majority is still busy talking about the war,” Péter Szijjártó said after an informal meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Toledo, in Spain, according to a ministry statement.
The majority took a stand for maintaining weapon deliveries, he said. That approach and an EU proposal that would earmark an annual 5 billion euros for military aid in the next 4 years showed that “everyone is calculating with a long war”, he said.
“Unfortunately, I was once again the only one to speak out against that approach today. We don’t want another four years of war; we want it to end as soon as possible,” he said.
Hungary was under enormous pressure to vote for the next 500 million euro installment for weapon deliveries for Ukraine, and a 20 billion euro package for the next 4 years, he said. That would mean that some 80 billion forints (EUR 210.4m) of Hungarian taxpayer money, “who bear no responsibility for the war“, would go towards that effort, he said.
Hungary refuses to discuss that proposal until Ukraine removes OTP from its list of the international sponsors of war, Szijjártó said.
“It’s an enormous contradiction that while Hungary is expected to pay tens of billions from Hungarian taxpayers’ money for weapon deliveries to Ukraine, the same country is branding a bank handling the accounts of 3 million Hungarians an international sponsor of the war,” he said.
Josep Borrell, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, proposed a meeting between himself, Szijjártó and his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, but the latter rejected the offer, Szijjártó said. According to Borrell, OTP Bank has not violated EU regulations or sanctions, he added.
Regarding the situation of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine, Szijjártó insisted that the “Ukrainisation” of some 15,000 students was about to start from 1 September. Meanwhile, Hungary is schooling some 5,000 Ukrainian refugee children, he said.
He said the new regulations coming into force in Ukraine were a “grave violation of international law”, adding that Hungary would see that as a priority when the assessment of the country’s application for EU membership starts this autumn.
Hungary will also stand fast regarding proposals on sanctions against the Russian nuclear industry, he said.
“Not only because it’s against national interests but also because sanctions against the nuclear sector are an excellent example of sanctions ruining the competitiveness of Europe’s economy and of how they take us for fools,” he said.
The US more than doubled Uranium imports from Russia in the first half of 2023, he said.
Speaking about the situation in west Africa, Szijjártó said that unless the region managed to achieve stability, calm and peace, it could be a source of new migration waves to Europe which the bloc could not handle.
“Rather than helping [the countries] defending its external borders … Brussels continues to inspire migration,” he said.
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