At an extraordinary press conference, the minister referred to this event as a great collective success for all Hungarians, highlighting that Budapest is now ready to host one of the world’s largest sporting events thanks to environmentally friendly, sustainable, and large-scale sports infrastructure developments.
According to the Hungarian foreign minister, a fully participated Olympics could be of great assistance in peacefully resolving armed conflicts, including the ongoing war in Ukraine, not to mention that the losers of an Olympic boycott would be the athletes who train and prepare tirelessly throughout their entire lives, and have no say in political decisions.
The minister advocated for strengthening ties between the European Union and Central Asia, urging the prompt signing of the EU-Kyrgyzstan Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, which was initialled in 2019.
The Hungarian foreign minister announced that Budapest will not consent to further arms shipments to Ukraine as long as Kyiv fails to remove OTP Bank from its list of international war sponsors.
At the UNSC session on the situation in Ukraine, the Hungarian foreign minister stated that the resolution of the armed conflict is not to be found on the battlefield but at the negotiating table.
‘We have managed to make a decision that does not carry the risk of war escalation, and the member states have made it clear that Ukraine can only receive an invitation to join NATO if the country fulfils all the necessary conditions and if the allies unanimously agree on it in the future,’ the Hungarian foreign minister stated.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs stated at a press conference on Tuesday that Hungary will keep its promise of not holding up Sweden’s joining of NATO, thus it is ready to back it once Turkey is. However, a recent incident of Quran burning in Stockholm may set the process back for some time again.
At a joint press conference held with his Slovak counterpart in Budapest, Minister Szijjártó said both Slovakia and Hungary insist that the composition of the energy mix of member states should remain a national competence.
Ukrainian representative Yuriy Kamelchuk demanded an explanation as to why Hungary had blocked the payment of the next instalment of military aid from the European Peace Facility (EPF) to Ukraine. In his reply, the Hungarian minister reminded that Ukraine has put the biggest Hungarian bank on their list of international sponsors of terrorism, suggesting that the Hungarian bank enables the Russian war machine. As soon as OTP is removed from that list, the minister declared, Hungary will reconsider its veto.
‘My Serbian colleague informed me that it finally stopped raining today, so they are assessing the situation, and we expect their response tomorrow. We are ready to help,’ the Foreign Minister wrote on his Facebook page.
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.
