The foreign minister said the Hungarian government has for years made it clear that it will continue to block formal meetings of the NATO-Ukraine Commission until the rights of ethnic Hungarians are restored in Ukraine.
Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, confirmed to Hungarian public current affairs channel M1 that the government was upholding its position on the matter. The foreign minister of Ukraine will only participate in the working dinner at a summit of NATO foreign ministers in Bucharest, Minister Szijjártó said on the sidelines of the meeting. He said that ever since the war in Ukraine had broken out, “everybody can see that our country has not been addressing the issue of the rights of Transcarpathian Hungarians”. “We are not bringing the issue up but we have not forgotten about it, either” Minister Szijjártó said, expressing hope that once the war is over, the opportunity will arise to start discussions about the matter again. At the NATO meeting, he said, an informal “non-paper” proposal had been put forward concerning the NATO-Ukraine Commission which Hungary and Turkey rejected signing. Minister Szijjártó said the working dinner to be attended by the Ukrainian foreign minister “would provide an appropriate platform for consultations as required by NATO member states”.