FM Szijjártó talked about ‘colour revolutions’ to his Serbian counterpart in Budapest

“Colour revolutions” instigated by international actors in various parts of the world over the past several years all ended in tragedy and destabilised entire regions for the long term, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in Budapest on Thursday.

Addressing a joint press conference with Tanja Miscevic, Serbia’s minister for European integration, Szijjártó said Serbia was the “most obvious example” that showed mankind was living in “an era of dangers”, arguing that the country was seeing “serious outside interference” similarly to the “central European countries with patriotic governments”.

Serbia and Hungary were in the same shoes

“Over the last several years, international actors have inspired several colour revolutions in various parts of the world,” Szijjártó said. “And every single one of these colour revolutions ended in tragedy, destabilising entire regions for the long term.” “We in central Europe reject every attempt to interfere in our internal affairs, and we make it clear that all peoples and nations are represented by their democratically-elected governments rather than various NGOs,” Szijjártó said.

He expressed thanks to US President Donald Trump for “abandoning the political strategy based on interference in other countries’ internal affairs”, emphasising that such attempts at interference in central Europe, including Hungary and Serbia, had “reached an incredible scale”. “Certain political and media players in our countries served and still serve foreign interests,” he said, calling for investigations to identify “what kind of foreign financial resources are used by which political and media players”.

Sovereignty, energy, EU accession

Meanwhile, Szijjártó said Hungary had a vested interest in and supported Serbia’s stability and peace, as the two countries were dependent on each other in strategically important areas. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that there’s no Hungarian energy security without Serbia and no Serbian energy security without Hungary,” he said.

He said energy security was a matter of sovereignty, adding that the recent attacks on energy infrastructure critical to Hungary’s energy supply were “unacceptable”. “Drone, missile and bomb strikes on the infrastructure guaranteeing our energy security are simply unacceptable,” the minister said. “We ask the Ukrainians to stop this … and we don’t want another situation where energy deliveries to Hungary have to be suspended for even a single day.”

Meanwhile, Szijjártó said Serbia’s accession to the European Union was also in Hungary’s national interest, and called on “Brussels and the member states pursuing a hypocritical policy” not to hinder the integration process. He vowed that Hungary would continue to provide whatever support was needed to speed up Serbia’s EU integration.

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