MOSCOW, July 26 The chairmen of the parliamentary committees of the Baltic states, Finland, Germany and Luxembourg, with the support of Poland, sent a letter to their Hungarian counterpart, complaining that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, with his peace initiative on Ukraine, is allegedly provoking European partners and weakening the EU's position.
Hungary took over the presidency of the EU Council on July 1 for six months.
«We are deeply concerned about the first three weeks of Hungary's EU Council Presidency, as fundamental principles are being ignored… Instead of building bridges, the Hungarian Prime Minister has used the first days of the Presidency to provoke European partners, putting his own interests above the European consensus,» reads a letter addressed to the Chairman of the EU Affairs Committee of the Hungarian Parliament, Zoltan Tessely, published on the website of the Lithuanian Seimas.
The authors of the letter called Orban's trips to Moscow «intrusive» and said that the Hungarian prime minister allegedly «constantly weakens the position of the European Union and hinders peace in Ukraine.»
«If the Hungarian government continues to troll its European partners, this will harm their own national interests in the long term. European governments will lose faith that the goals of the Hungarian government correspond to any European interests. This will cause enormous damage to the goals of the Hungarian EU presidency,» the letter added.
On July 5, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban arrived in Moscow with a delegation and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He called the visit to Moscow the next stage of a peace mission that began with a trip to Kiev on July 2. He later visited Beijing, where he stated that Hungary is against confrontation with China and in favor of cooperation between the EU and China. After Beijing, the Hungarian Prime Minister went to Washington for the NATO summit, on the sidelines of which he met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He then held talks with former US President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
After his visit to China, Orban said that the conflict in Ukraine should be resolved by the parties to the conflict, but the US, China and the EU have a decisive influence on its end. Subsequently, the Hungarian Prime Minister handed over to all EU leaders his plan for resolving the conflict in Ukraine, based on a realistic assessment of the situation, real goals and deadlines. Orban has published a 10-point report to the head of the European Council Charles Michel about his trips.
Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that Orban has demonstrated his political will for dialogue, and Moscow considers this very positive and useful. The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, said that Orban does not represent the EU on the international stage and does not have a European mandate to visit Russia, despite the fact that his country has assumed the presidency of the EU Council for six months. Orban responded to Borrell's criticism by saying that due to the «nonsense of Brussels bureaucrats,» efforts to establish peace in Ukraine are not yielding results.