Hungary FM Holds Talks With Ukrainian Counterpart + Video

Hungary's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto held talks with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba on Ukraine's European integration aspirations, in Brussels.

Brüsszel, 2023. december 11. Szijjártó Péter külgazdasági és külügyminiszter az EU-tagállamok külügyminisztereinek találkozóján Brüsszelben 2023. december 11-én. MTI/AP/Virginia Mayo Fotó: Virginia Mayo

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto held talks with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba on Ukraine's European integration aspirations, in Brussels.

Following the meeting, FM Szijjarto posted a video on his social media, providing details about the meeting.

On his Facebook page, Mr Szijjarto wrote that despite not meeting in person since the outbreak of the war, they had stayed in touch before February last year to enhance relations between Hungary and Ukraine.

This was a difficult period for bilateral relations because, starting from 2015, Ukraine introduced rules increasingly curtailing the rights of the Hungarian national community, casting a shadow over bilateral ties,

 – he added, emphasizing Hungary's expectation for the minority law to revert to the 2015 situation.

Hungary's foreign minister stressed that they also discussed Ukraine's European integration ambitions during the meeting. In this context, he noted that "this is not a tactical issue for us, but a decision that has historical significance for the future of the entire European Union".

FM Szijjarto underlined that  

the decision proposal remains unprepared, and the European Commission has practically no clue about what impact Ukraine's EU membership would have on the entire community. 

"One only has to think back to the unmanageable problems caused by the European Commission's previous decision on grain transit or the abolition of the licensing requirement of Ukrainian trucks," Mr Szijjarto said in the post.

The European Commission has failed to carry out the necessary preparations that would ensure Ukraine conducts accession negotiations in a mutually beneficial way, he added.

Cover photo: Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto attends a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, on December 11, 2023 (Photo: MTI/AP/Virginia Mayo)