Hungarian FM Szijjártó: Hungary rejects federalist ideas

The 9 June election will be “crucial” for the future direction of the European Union, Péter Szijjártó, the foreign minister, said on Friday in Sankt Gallen, Switzerland.

Hungary rejects federalist ideas and prefers a strong union based on sovereign member states, Szijjártó said at a forum held at the city’s university.

After ridding itself of communism, Hungary rejoined Europe, which was then proud of its Christian heritage and seen as a prosperous community of sovereign states, he said.

Twenty years later, “a war is raging … in [Hungary’s] neighbourhood, and the country faces its direct and grave consequences,” he said, noting that more than one million refugees had passed through the country’s eastern borders.

Hungary, he added, was in the minority in the bloc in advocating for a ceasefire and peace negotiations starting in Ukraine as quickly as possible. No solution to the war exists on the battlefield, he said.

Szijjártó noted that many Transcarpathian Hungarians had been lost on the battlefield. “We don’t want any more Hungarians to die in this war…” he said.

Hungary, he noted, had strongly condemned the war from the start. Referring to accusations that he was “Putin’s spy” and a “Kremlin propagandist”, Szijjártó said he himself had stated Hungary’s condemnation in front of a thousand people in Moscow, “which not many other European politicians have the courage to do”. “It’s all very well doing so in Brussels, Washington and Berlin, but it doesn’t take much courage,” he added.