After long discussions in the EU Council on the reaction to Viktor Orbán’s “peacekeeping” trips to Moscow and Beijing, the head of European diplomacy announced the postponement of the foreign ministers’ meeting from Budapest to Brussels.
Borrell said the meeting, scheduled to take place in Budapest at the end of August, would now be held in Brussels after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán visited Moscow and Beijing without EU support. Borrell told reporters in Brussels after the last meeting of EU foreign ministers before the summer break:
“We have to send a signal, even if it is a symbolic signal.”
Borrell declined to use the word “boycott,” saying Hungary would attend the informal meeting “whether in Budapest, whether in Brussels or elsewhere.”
Hungary took over the rotating presidency of the 27-nation EU on July 1, shortly after which Orbán visited Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing, calling his visits “peace missions.”
Luxembourg’s foreign minister called the boycott proposal “nonsense” and called for a visit to Budapest to clearly express his position to the Hungarian government. In turn, Spanish Minister Jose Manuel Albares indicated that his country “does not support boycotts in the European Union.” According to dpa, citing diplomats, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and her counterparts from France and Italy expressed similar views.
Meanwhile, Poland and a number of other eastern and northern European countries supported the boycott of the Budapest meeting. Lithuania and Sweden had already announced a few days ago that they would not send their ministers to the meeting in Hungary.
On July 5, Orbán met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, where the two sides discussed the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine and possible ways to start peace talks. Earlier, on July 3, Orbán was in Kyiv, where he discussed these issues with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. On July 8, Prime Minister Orbán spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, after which he met with former US President Donald Trump in the US.
