Hungary’s National Card Programme enabling Russian citizens a Schengen access under fire – UPDATED

“The pro-war majority in the European Parliament is again launching mendacious attacks against the pro-peace Hungarian government”, as the EP’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) is to hold a hearing on Hungary’s National Card programme “based on false accusations” on Wednesday, the Fidesz MEP group said.

The Fidesz MEPs said in a statement on Tuesday that according to pro-war politicians of the EP, the expansion of the National Card scheme to Russian and Belarusian citizens threatened the European Union’s security. When LIBE organised the hearing, they only invited the European Commission, and “they don’t even want to hear about the participation of the Hungarian government”, the statement added.

Kinga Gál, the head of the Fidesz EP delegation, said that National Card applications underwent strict security checks and the EC had previously never criticised these. In the first month of the scheme, only five Russian and Belarusian citizens were granted a National Card, she added.

“It is obvious that the European left was raising accusations without knowing the facts. All of this is a new chapter in the anti-Hungarian political agitation and series of unfounded attacks,” she said.

Fidesz MEP András László said Hungary’s immigration regulations were among the strictest in Europe and added that “hardly 6,000 Russian citizens are working in Hungary, as against nearly 260,000 in Germany.” “Surprisingly, they do not pose security risks, only the ones living in Hungary. These are double standards, pure and simple,” he added.

Wednesday’s debate held by the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) on Hungary’s National Card scheme was “nothing else than another political attack against Hungary,” Fidesz MEP András László said in Brussels.

László told the press after the LIBE Committee meeting that it had been “a fully unbelievable cynical stage act”, with special regard to the fact that the European Commission’s assessments of the National Card Programme has not revealed any proof that there would be reasons for concern.

The MEPs addressing the debate who asked questions from Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson about the regulations could have also received information from the Hungarian government’s representative, considering the Minister for European Union Affairs Janos Boka was in the EP on Wednesday, and even held a press conference on the subject, he said. It was an expressed request by the Patriots for Europe group to invite representatives of the Hungarian government because dialogue could only have developed if both sides had been present, he added.

The committee rejected the request and the participants addressing Wednesday’s debate were unable to specify any concrete objection to the current regulations, László said. The commissioner even said that no legal problems had been identified, he added.

Johansson said that a very small number of permits had been issued and there was not such a significant scale of influx that the international press and several western European politicians had indicated.

“The politicians addressing the debate, including the representatives of the European People’s Party which had initiated the debate, were not interested in the responses and the facts,” László said. “It was absurd, partly infuriating, but also revealing that the debate was nothing else than another political attack against Hungary,” he said.

In response to a question, he said further developments could be expected because Johansson had expressed “further concerns” about the Hungarian regulations.

“The pressure on Hungary will be immense; the attacks will continue in order to break Hungary’s anti-war policies, but we will obviously resist and we will protect Hungarian interests,” he said.

Ceasefire needed for sustainable peace, official says

A ceasefire must be in place before a peace plan for ending the war can be properly drafted, and this is the basic “science of peace-making”, Balázs Orbán, the prime minister’s political director, wrote in an article published by the political weekly Mandiner in connection with both the war in Ukraine and Israel’s conflict with Hamas forces. He wrote scientific analyses of past wars showed that the chance of making peace deteriorated after the first thirty days of an armed conflict breaking out, and if wars between states dragged out for more than a year, then they often lasted for more than a decade.

Had the warring parties listened to the Hungarian government’s call for peace from the very start, or had talks that began in Turkey in March 2022 been pursued, then the situation might be very different, he added. So peace talks, even now, must start as soon as possible, Orbán said, underlining Hungary’s commitment to peace.

Half of conflicts end with a negotiated settlement of some kind, more often with a ceasefire rather than with a peace agreement, he said, adding that there was a significant difference between the two: the first is an agreement on the temporary or permanent suspension of violence, while the second addressed a conflict’s main causes and was therefore sustainable.

Conflict ends with a ceasefire in 30 percent of cases, with the victory of one side in 21 percent, with peace in 16 percent, while in 33 percent of cases there is a different kind of outcome, he said. With time, war becomes unsustainable and leads to a painful stalemate, which in turn leads to the negotiating table, he said. Both sides recognise that the status quo is harming them and they cannot defeat their opponent, he said. So talks are the only logical way to resolve the unsustainable situation, he said.

Well-defined peace plan

Orbán rejected the argument that a concrete peace plan is needed before the sides can sit down at the negotiating table, and he cited the Edinburgh University’s Political Settlements Research Programme suggesting that a sustainable peace agreement must follow a ceasefire, which is the first and essential element of any peace process.

In other words, the warring parties rarely have a well-defined peace plan before declaring a ceasefire, and it is only various factors on the ground that force them to stop fighting temporarily and start peace negotiations.

The final peace outcome is worked out during the negotiations; there is no pre-written peace plan, he emphasised. So the “mania” of the Hungarian government’s critics for a substantive peace plan “is completely unfounded”, he said. “It is incomprehensible that the leaders of the Western world aren’t taking meaningful steps for the sake of peace,” he said, arguing that the war in Ukraine intensified the longer the conflict dragged on.

“The path to peace starts with … a cease-fire, the suspension of hostilities and the conclusion of peace as soon as possible,” Orbán said, adding that this was in the interest of both Europe and Hungary.

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