Hungary’s NATO membership at risk? German-French démarche after PM Orbán’s political director’s cowardly words – UPDATED
Balázs Orbán, the prime minister’s political director, suggested in an interview shared last week that the Orbán cabinet would not fight against a Russian invasion like President Zelensky’s Ukraine. Today, the French and German ambassadors sent a démarche to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, writing that Orbán’s words were outrageous to the entire NATO. German Ambassador Julia Gross said yesterday that the Hungarian government had disembarked the road of the two nations’ friendship.
Would Hungary fight against Russia?
According to Szabad Európa, German and French ambassadors in Budapest submitted a joint démarche to Hungary’s foreign affairs ministry today. The step came after Balázs Orbán, the prime minister’s political director, suggested in an interview that his government would not defend the country against Russian aggression like President Zelensky does. He said they would not have recommended Zelensky to lead his country and nation into a “defensive war” against Russia. He said we [Hungarians – ed.] learned that in 1956: Hungary grasped that “we must be cautious with Hungarian lives”. We covered the story HERE.
Orbán’s thoughts resulted in an outrage in Hungary. Heroes of the 1956 revolution and freedom fight rejected his suggestion that their brethren died in vain, and politicians and other members of public life demanded Orbán’s immediate resignation. However, PM Orbán called his namesake’s words only an error, and the political director remained in place. Balázs Orbán’s first reaction was a communication offensive against the leftist politicians and influencers. Later, he apologised for his “ambiguous” words and said he would fight against Russia in case of a war.
German-French démarche followed Orbán’s words
However, his thoughts stirred up a lot of dust even abroad. Germany’s Ambassador in Hungary, Julia Gross, said the Hungarian government got off the road of the friendship of the two nations at the Memorial Day of the German Unity celebrated yesterday in Budapest.
Julia Gross and Jonathan Lacôte submitted a joint démarche writing that the thoughts expressed by Orbán are insulting and contradict the spirit of NATO and the joint defence.
Szabad Európa says that a démarche is the mildest form of expressing protest in diplomacy. However, it is unfamiliar between allies. Based on the information of Szabad Európa, a diplomat handed over the demarche to the Foreign Minister of Hungary, but he was not welcomed according to the protocol. Regularly, the minister or one of his secretaries receives such diplomatic documents.
German Ambassador Gross slammed the Orbán cabinet
It was also unfamiliar between theoretically allied countries how Julia Gross, the German ambassador, talked about the German-Hungarian relationship in Vigadó yesterday. She slammed the Hungarian government’s pro-Russia policies and criticised the Orbán cabinet for the more than one-year-long delay of Sweden’s NATO accession.
That was the first time that no Hungarian government official was present in the celebration of German unity. The official explanation is that the government held a meeting in Geszt’s renewed Tisza Castle, accepting Minister János Lázár’s invitation.
Szabad Európa added that PM Orbán met with the leaders of German carmakers active in Hungary in the last few weeks. Márton Nagy, Hungary’s national economy minister, also held talks with them. The German carmakers did not support the EU’s Chinese car tax but also expressed an explicitly pessimistic opinion about the future of the European carmaking industry.
Szabad Európa asked the Foreign Affairs Ministry for comment but has not received an answer.
UPDATE: Hungary to vote against punitive tariffs on Chinese EVs
Hungary will cast an “emphatic no” vote on a European Union proposal on punitive tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said on Thursday. Those tariffs are “harmful and dangerous”, Szijjarto said at a cabinet meeting in Geszt, in the south of the country. He noted that EU member states would take a vote on the proposal on Friday.
“The bureaucrats in Brussels are preparing for a ritual killing of Europe’s future competitiveness tomorrow,” he said. He added that European automotive industry representatives had protested “tooth and nail” against the measure and pointed to the local industry’s “extraordinarily close cooperation” with their Chinese counterparts.
He said Hungary was the “best example” of that cooperation, a place where partnerships between German car makers and Chinese suppliers were “close and in harmony”. He added that alliances with Chinese suppliers were a “fundamental element” of many big European car makers’ strategies, while they also saw China as a “very important market”, and many had manufacturing facilities there.
He warned that moving forward with the punitive tariffs would result in retaliatory measures, and said Chinese officials had already announced heightened scrutiny for some farm and food imports from the EU. Szijjarto said he had spoken with executives of the biggest German automotive industry companies during the week and they had taken a “unanimous” stand against the proposed tariffs.
Read also:
- Controversy: Putin supporters invited to the 29th Budapest International Book Festival
- Czech President criticises PM Orbán for undermining European unity amid Ukraine conflict
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The NATO membership for two years has been dancing around the reality that Hungary is no longer a NATO ally but a Russian ally inside NATO. The demarche will be sent to Szijjarto’s waste bin and Fidesz will continue to do what it has been doing to work against NATO such as holding up Sweden and Finland’s entry for two years. Fidesz will not change. Orban made his decision years ago to ally with Putin. The NATO membership at some point has to “put up or shut up” and put up means exhiling Hungary from the organization. Right now the organization has been reduced to conducting security discussions in a secretive manner without Hungary’s (and likely Slovakia’s) participation to avoid having a Russian mole in their meetings.