After Orbán praises anti-Hungarian Simion, Kövér stresses ethnic Hungarians’ interests in Romania

The interests of the ethnic Hungarian community are a priority in Romania as well, Speaker of Parliament László Kövér said in an interview with weekly Mandiner.

He said the decision on who the right presidential candidate for ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania was should be decided by them and specifically their political representatives, namely the ethnic Hungarian RMDSZ party.

“We fully respect and support this decision; this is always how it has been, so this is nothing new,” the speaker said. Kövér said Hungary and its government did not want to weigh in on the election of any country and did not support any presidential candidates.

This vote, he said, was the internal affair of Romania’s electorate. He noted that there was already a precedent for European Union institutions questioning the internal democratic decision of a member state, citing as an example the attempt in the early 2000s to isolate Austria’s OVP-FPO coalition led by Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel. “In politics, it’s patience, perseverance and wisdom that get us the result we all hope for,” Kövér said.

“We, as a non-EU country, stood up for people’s right to make their own decisions even back then,” he said. “Because we don’t believe that the EU was created to interfere in the internal affairs of any country, especially not as grossly as it has been doing more recently, or to try to discipline voters either verbally or through different kinds of sanctions.”

Kövér said Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s remarks had been about Hungary’s willingness to cooperate with a country’s governing parties regarding bilateral ties, the given country’s minority communities and regarding EU affairs. He said the most important consideration was respecting the rights, dignity and interests of the country’s ethnic Hungarian communities.

Meanwhile, Kövér said it was “unprecedented” how far the AUR party’s leader had gone with his earlier “anti-Hungarian gestures and remarks” as well as certain actions he had organised, adding that the government fully understood and shared the concerns that had arisen from this.