Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said 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.
Speaking at a press conference held together with Mathias Cormann, the Secretary-General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Minister Szijjártó said in response to a question that he had made Hungary’s requests clear at his meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro 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 document 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 confrontation with Russia should be avoided at all costs. “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.