Hungarian FM blasts EU responses to challenges

The past year has proven that Europe is incapable of giving good responses to the challenges, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto said in Budapest on Wednesday.

Szijjarto, delivering his annual report to parliament's foreign affairs committee, said that the European Union (EU)'s policy to date is "a policy of ritual suicide" because it is eye-catching but is putting European security and its future at risk.

Europe, he said, is facing five challenges: instability in Ukraine that is at war, unprecedented instability in the south which triggered the migration wave, the risk of terrorism inherent in the uncontrolled inflow of people, stagnation on the energy security front, and the well-known economic challenges.

The EU has been giving self-destructive responses to these challenges, he said.

Szijjarto cited what he called Europe's increasing decline while the EU institutions are blocking enlargement, which some countries including Hungary believe is the only way to strengthen the EU.

There has been no improvement with Ukraine, he said, while the EU's sanctions are hurting Russia, Europe, and Ukraine, and "have brought us no closer to adherence to the Minsk agreement."

He called the EU's immigration policy and response to the threat of terrorism "the peak of hypocrisy and self-destructiveness."

Hungary, he said, has been unfairly and unjustly criticized. "We demand respect," he said. It now appears that the policy Hungary has been pursuing over the past half year is the one the rest of Europe will have to emulate, he added. Endit