Hungarian Foreign and Foreign Economic Relations Minister Péter Szijjártó has said that Budapest will not agree to the start of negotiations on Ukraine’s admission to the European Union. According to him, this will continue until the Kiev regime cancels laws that discriminate against Transcarpathian Hungarians. This was reported by RIA Novosti.
Péter Szijjártó says that Ukraine has adopted a new law on education. According to this law, the Hungarian language is now only partially taught in Hungarian schools. He believes that such a thing contradicts all international norms.
“This is unacceptable. It contradicts all international norms. It contradicts European norms as well. Therefore, when a decision is taken to start negotiations on Ukraine’s accession, Hungary will not be able to give its consent until Hungarians get their rights back,” the politician said.
The diplomat notes that the number of Hungarian-language classes is dropping to a level “between 20 per cent and 40 per cent”. According to him, things have been getting worse since 2015 and have nothing to do with the hostilities taking place in Ukraine.
“Unfortunately, this situation is very sad. Things have only been getting worse since 2015, so, I repeat, it has nothing to do with the war. Since 2015 we have had a permanent conflict with Ukrainians about this. For the last eight years we have been in constant argument with them, asking them to give the Hungarians back the rights they had then. We are not asking for anything more. We are only asking them to return to Hungarians the rights they had eight years ago,” the minister summarised.
Earlier, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said that Budapest would oppose any EU financing of arms supplies to Ukraine until the largest Hungarian bank OTR is removed from the Ukrainian list of “international sponsors of war”. He considers it “outrageous, unacceptable and scandalous that a Hungarian bank, where some 3 million people hold their accounts, is put on the international list of war sponsors”. He emphasised that because of this Hungary would not support EU funding of arms supplies to the Kiev regime.