EU foreign policy chief undermines Hungary’s EU presidency?

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell’s “manoeuvring” to “undermine” the planned programmes of the Hungarian EU presidency is “regrettable”, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in Budapest on Friday.

Answering questions from journalists, Szijjártó said he had not received a letter from Borrell inviting him to a Foreign Affairs Council meeting on Aug 28-29, the same dates for which the Hungarian presidency has scheduled an informal meeting in Budapest.

“I heard that the high representative tried to do some manoeuvring,” Szijjártó said. “I’m not surprised, I followed his career as high representative over the last five years which was one of the most unsuccessful period of European foreign policy. And if he had sent such a letter, I would have probably sent him back a sandbox shovel, because this whole ‘I’m gathering all my friends together or you are’ is at the maturity level of a kindergartener.”

“So for my part, I am, of course, looking forward to the meeting with my fellow foreign ministers at Gymnich with pleasure,” Szijjártó said. “If the meeting is held elsewhere then it’ll be held elsewhere.”

He said the EU today had “much bigger problems” to deal with, calling it “more regrettable than outrageous” that this was the foreign policy chief’s top priority when there was a war happening on the continent and the bloc’s competitiveness and weight in foreign policy had “taken a dramatic hit”.

“Fortunately, Josep Borrell is leaving his post soon, and this could provide hope that the European Union’s slide in importance on foreign policy can be stopped,” he said. “Though I must tell you that being in my tenth year as foreign minister, I have worked with three EU foreign policy high representatives, and each time one’s term expired I was sure that it couldn’t get worse and I was always wrong.”

Proof of Russian-American cooperation

Asked about the possibility of increased American participation in the upgrade of Hungary’s Paks nuclear power plant, Szijjártó said it was up to Rosatom, the Russian main contractor on the project, to select is sub-contractors, and there already are American, French and German partners working on the project, with their participation worth hundreds of millions or even a billion euros.

He said the fact that US-Russian trade turnover in May was up 50 percent compared with April was proof of “this sort of Russian-American cooperation”. “And one of the biggest contributing factor to this is the deliveries of Russian uranium to the United States,” he added.

“So if Russia is the US’ top uranium supplier then I don’t see what the outrage is about,” Szijjártó said. “And, of course, we can say that it’ll be banned from August or from January, but the war has been going on for two and a half years now. We’ve been hearing for two and a half years now that we’re feeding the Russian war machine by buying natural gas and oil from Russia. So then what were the US uranium imports over the last two and a half years?”

Commenting on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent remarks, Szijjártó said thousands were dying each day in Hungary’s neighbouring country, tens of thousands were fleeing, and border guards were having to hold back those trying to leave the country.

“We can all see the videos of the way the Ukrainians are conscripting people,” he said. “It’s very interesting that the West isn’t outraged by this and that NGOs aren’t making an issue out of it. It’s very interesting that those who usually talk about human rights are silent right now.”

“And then here we are, the ones who are willing and brave enough to talk about the need to make peace, and then Ukraine’s president talks about the Hungarian prime minister in such an appalling way,” he said.

“I have a very hard time accepting and processing this and stopping myself from using coarse expressions,” the minister said. “But we’re going to continue this peace mission, because if there won’t be peace soon . even more brutal things can happen on the frontline, the threat of escalation will be even higher than before . and there’ll be a threat of all of Europe going up in flames.”

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