FM Szijjártó: Hungarian government most sovereign in Europe

Hungary’s government has the strongest legitimacy in Europe, enabling it to conduct the most sovereign foreign policy in the continent and focus exclusively on national interests, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said at a festival in western Hungary, on Saturday.

There is great uncertainty in world politics but despite this, Hungarian foreign policy’s scope is broad, determined by geography and national aims, with the government able to look at these solely from its own standpoint, the ministry cited Szijjártó as saying at the Tranzit Festival held in Tihany.

Hungarians who elected the government voted for guaranteed security and for national interests to be enforced in the “new world order”, he said.

Its policies are also morally justified, as the government has never taken steps to prolong the war and has not contributed to a single death, he said.

“The legitimacy of Hungarian foreign policy is unique in Europe, simply because the Hungarian government has the strongest mandate in Europe,” he said.

Szijjártó slammed the EU for being dragged into a “spiral of sanctions” against Russia. “We are having trouble finding a sector isn’t subject to sanctions yet.” Sanctions against Russia are harming the EU and not bringing the end of the war closer, he added.

He also condemned weapon deliveries, saying they only caused more deaths and a risk of escalation.

The financial, migration and health-care crises of the past decade, along with the war in Ukraine, have upended the previous global state of affairs, and are likely to bring about an era of “unrest, jostling and a fight for position” in international politics, he said.

The elections of the past years have shown attempts to influence the results against every party that does not represent the globalist liberal side, he said. “The only country where those attemps failed is Hungary,” he said.

Meanwhile, the EU’s competitiveness has plummeted, and it’s losing out because “it has let itself be provoked into a race with the US for who gives more military support to Ukraine,” he said.

As a result, the price of gas in the US is now one-seventh of that in Europe, and electricity in China is by two-thirds cheaper, he said.

The “remarkably misguided” policies of the EU are also leading to blocs being formed in the world, he said. “This may be good for the bloc leaders but not for the countries caught in the middle,” he said, calling for “civilised” cooperation between East and West.

The government does not follow this stance because they are “the agents of one force or the other”, but because this is in the nation’s interest, he said. “Those now accusing us of being pro-Russia watched idly as half the continent suffered under Russian dictatorship for decades.”

Meanwhile, Hungary has managed to stay on its feet and even to grow economically, despite the recent crises, he said.

Szijjártó said it was “important” for Hungary to grasp the opportunities offered by the “revolutionary change in the car manufacturing industry”. “We now have the fourth largest capacity for manufacturing electric batteries in the world, and will jump to second place once investments currently under way are completed. We will be second behind China, and this will mean a guarantee for the Hungarian economy to stay on a growth path in the coming years,” he said.

“Without plants coming to Hungary, the jobs of hundreds of thousands of Hungarians would be at risk, as the Hungarian car manufacturing industry employs 170,000 people directly employs three-and-a-half to four times as more indirectly,” he said.

Unfair practices are also employed in the battle for those investments, he said, citing attempts to mislead ordinary people and incite anxiety by making dishonest claims about the impact of such investments. “It is an extremely dishonest movement, and opposed to national interests, to mislead people … resulting in such factories being built in Germany, France, the US and Sweden,” he said.