French President Emmanuel Macron said that part of being in the EU meant there were certain “constraints” and no member state should take action that weakened the bloc.
There’s absolutely no need to prohibit a head of state or government from going in one direction or another. What I am asking, out of respect and loyalty, is that we coordinate beforehand and coordinate afterwards (...) that we do not use these bilateral contacts to negotiate things that would weaken our unity. I think that since the start of the war in Ukraine, our strength has been that we have been united and quick and that we have held a line,
Macron said of the meeting, adding that Hungary had made a sovereign decision to join the European community, which made life much better for the Hungarian people. At the same time, the French president said he has no intention of giving any moral lectures to any prime minister, let alone Prime Minister Orban, as governments of sovereign member states can conduct politics in multiple directions without any problem.
What's more, Macron believes that Viktor Orban's good relations - especially compared to that of other European leaders - with the Russian president may prove to be useful at some point. Here, the French president may have been referring to possible peace negotiations.
