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Minister Szijjártó to OECD Secretary-General: We only ask Ukraine to respect nationalities, including Hungarians
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Ukraine’s response to Hungary’s 11-point document on minority rights is not bringing closer the restoration of the Hungarian community’s rights to 2015 levels, the foreign minister said on Tuesday.
Speaking at a press conference held together with Mathias Cormann, the Secretary-General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Szijjártó said in response to a question that he had made Hungary’s requests clear at his meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmitro Kuleba, in January. “We asked for no special treatment, only to restore the acquired rights of [ethnic] Hungarians,” he said.
He lamented that Ukraine’s response to the document “contains no progress in that regard”.
Hungary will respond to the response on Wednesday, he said.
“Until Ukraine adopts legislation to restore the rights of Hungarian national minorities, Hungary sees no point in a highest-level meeting,” he said.
Asked about French President Emmanuel Macron’s statement that sending land troops to Ukraine “cannot be excluded”, Szijjártó said it went against NATO’s unanimous decision that direct confrontation with Russia should be avoided at all cost. “In the past two years, amending this decision. has not been tabled in any NATO meetings.”
Hungary will stick to the relevant NATO decision, he said.
Szijjártó calls for restoring common sense to global economy
It is critical to restore “common sense and normality” to the approach to the global economy in order to avoid a long-term slowdown, Szijjártó said on Tuesday, adding that the OECD could play a key role in this.
“We want to avoid a long-term global economic slowdown,” Szijjártó told a joint press conference with OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann, according to a ministry statement. “We believe that this requires restoring common sense and normal thinking to the global economy.”
“This common sense and normal way of thinking is in no way compatible with initiatives aimed at isolating the Eastern and Western economies,” the minister said. “It is incompatible with sanctions policies that lead to soaring energy prices and inflation.”