“On Great European Developments” spoke Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys arriving at the Tuesday meeting of the Council of EU Foreign Ministers after the Hungarian election.
“Now there won’t be a Trojan horse in our castle, in our hall, and that’s a good thing”
he announced. His Hungarian colleague, Péter Szijjártó missed the meetingas Viktor Orbán is not leaving either for the summit of EU heads of state and government starting on Thursday referring to handover.
A few weeks ago transcripts and audio recordings were made public About the negotiations between Péter Szijjártó and his Russian counterpart, Szergej Lavrov. These were, for example, about EU sanctions, which the Council decides on, as well as about what was said at one of the Council’s meetings. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, also at the level of the leaders of the member states wanted to raise the matterand was waiting for an explanation.
Budrys spoke on Tuesday that “we must not forget what happened before”. Allegations that “information was shared from the room” should be thoroughly investigated.
“We cannot let these kinds of violations go uninvestigated. This is important.”
Austrian State Secretary Sepp Schellhorn welcomed himthat the Hungarians chose a pro-European path, he mentioned the absence of his Hungarian colleague and the accusations brought against him.
“Now we are obviously at a time when we can all trust that we can move from a European Union of 26+1 to a European Union of 27” – he stated Romanian Foreign Minister Oana-Silvia Țoiu. He hoped that they could open the first accession chapters with Moldova and Ukraine, because according to him, too much time has already been wasted and this has a geopolitical cost.
Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna he trusted thatthat the Hungarian election will “change the picture that has been here in the Council for the past few years”, they can accept the 90 billion euro loan intended for Ukraine, about which in December the leaders of the member states, including Viktor Orbán, unanimously agreed. (Due to the shutdown of the Barátság pipeline, the Hungarian government subsequently blocked one of the pieces of legislation required for a loan that would not impose a financial burden on Hungary.)
Maxime Prévot, According to Belgium’s foreign minister they still hope that the recent, expected and welcome election result in Hungary will make the loan possible very quickly.
Artjoms Uršuļskis, State Secretary of the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs saw a great opportunity now, after the Hungarian election. According to him, they should return to the missing legislation and the current sanctions package, the adoption of which was also blocked by the Hungarian government.
Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee betrayed himthat he had already spoken a with his future Hungarian colleague, Anita Orbán.
At the end of the meeting, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas expected a positive decision on the Ukrainian loan in the next 24 hours, more about this we wrote here.
