Decisions that undermine the rights of the Hungarian national community will make it difficult to make decisions that require sacrifices in order to support Ukraine in the coming period in Hungary, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó stated on Monday in Brussels.

The head of the ministry said at the press conference held during the break of the EU foreign affairs council meeting that the main topic this time was the war in Ukraine. "I see that even though a new year has begun, the war attitude does not change, and the same war atmosphere prevails," he said. As an example of this, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell proposed that the bloc allocate another 500 million euros from the European Peace Framework to finance arms shipments to Ukraine, and contribute 45 million euros to the operation of the Ukrainian military training mission .

"Our position is clear: peace is needed as soon as possible (.) The further away someone is geographically from Ukraine, the less likely they feel the effects of the war directly, and therefore the less commitment there is to establishing peace as soon as possible," he said . "Any decision that could lead to the prolongation or potential escalation of the war is against our interests, so we do not think it is a good idea to increase arms shipments, but at the same time we do not prevent the implementation of the European Union's decision on this," he said .

Péter Szijjártó then raised the issue of "concentrated and serious attacks" against the Hungarian national community in Ukraine. He strongly objected to the fact that school principals and teachers of Hungarian nationality are being fired suddenly, in large numbers, without any justification, and that institutes are being forced to remove Hungarian national symbols. "These are all signs of a serious, concentrated anti-Hungarian attack," he warned. "All this is unacceptable, not only us Hungarians, but also the European Union must take action against it. It is unacceptable for anyone to present this as a bilateral issue" .

As a candidate for EU membership, Ukraine must respect the rules of the community, and ensuring the rights of national minorities is a common value and obligation. The minister emphasized that they expected that the situation of the national communities in Ukraine would improve during the membership negotiations. "This would be logical, this would be correct, this would be legal, but this is not what is happening," he stated, underlining that the rules adopted in December create an even worse situation, and this, in addition to serious legal attacks, causes serious concerns.

He believed that the laws valid in 2015 should be returned to, and he called making Hungarian-language schools impossible. "Concentrated attacks against Hungarians and anti-Hungarian actions make it very difficult to make decisions in the coming period that demand sacrifices from Hungary in order to support Ukraine," he said.

Source: MTI

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