Slovak House Speaker Pellegrini holds talks in Budapest – UPDATE
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Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Monday in Budapest that Hungary will stick to its “policy of peace” and welcomes Slovakia’s similar stance after meeting Peter Pellegrini, the head of the Slovak National Assembly.
Orbán said Hungary was “watching with concern as hundreds of thousands die or become widows or orphans” in the war in Ukraine.
Orbán said peace was the most pressing issue currently, “but Europe is speaking the language of war.”
Hungary and Slovakia, meanwhile, are speaking the language of peace, he said. Orbán vowed Hungary would stand by its policy and said he hoped to be able to work for peace with Slovakia.
“Good neighbourly relations are all the more valuable in times of danger,” Orbán said.
Orbán and Pellegrini discussed matters pertaining to sovereignty, such as the European Union debate on “taking away member states’ right to veto certain issues, including foreign policy, and the ragulation that decisions must be voted for unanimously,” he said.
On that matter, Hungary and Slovakia are pro-sovereignty, he said.
Orbán thanked Slovakia for its help in protecting the Hungarian-Serbian border, noting that the country had sent policemen to perform their tasks there during Pellegrini’s premiership.
“We got help in protecting our southern borders, which is why we don’t have tens or hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants roaming central Europe today,”
He added that Slovakia and Hungary also fought together against the EU’s mandatory resettlement quotas.
He added that Hungary and Slovakia both value “energy freedom” and cooperate in energy policy, including nuclear energy.
He welcomed that 18 new border crossings have been opened between the two countries since 2018.
He praised Pellegrini as a prime minister under whose tenure Hungary and Slovakia’s friendship had deepened, “and we found common ground on which to build good neighbourly relations.”
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Hungarian house speaker meets Slovak counterpart
Speaker of Parliament László Kövér met his Slovak counterpart, Peter Pellegrini, on Monday, to discuss the challenges brought on by illegal migration and the future of the European Union.
Kövér said in a press release that Slovakia and Hungary had similar views on the EU’s enlargement, migration and the future of the bloc, he said.
He slammed the EU’s treatment of south-eastern European candidates as “morally indefensible and unfair”, and called for the process to be sped up.
Hungary and Slovakia’s interests in “reforming the organisational and treaty system of the EU” are also similar, Kövér said. “We insist that the EU remains an alliance of strong member states.”
The two countries will also oppose all “encroaching attempts” to strip member states of competencies, Kövér said, citing mandatory resettlement quotas or scrapping unanimous decision-making as examples.
He called for further talks on cooperation “after the European parliamentary elections”. Slovakia is Hungary’s third largest trading partner, and the economic cooperation creates further fields of interest, he added.
