Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto - Photo: MTI

Government ready to fight against progressive foreign policy, foreign minister tells CPAC

The Hungarian government is ready to fight against progressive foreign policy, which aims to "annihilate" sovereign national foreign policy and to eliminate the principle of unanimous decision-making in the European Union's foreign policy, the foreign minister told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Budapest on Friday.

Nine member states have already set up a group, the “first vanguard of progressive pressurising”, with the express aim of eliminating the principle of unanimity in decision-making in EU foreign policy, Szijjarto said. “This would mean the end of national interests,” he said.

The initiative was launched by Germany, which vowed to refrain from sending weapons to Ukraine when the war started, but has become and active supplier of cutting-edge heavy weaponry since, he said.

“And what were they saying earlier? That no sanctions can be imposed on natural gas and oil deliveries,” Szijjarto said, adding that since then, the EU had imposed sanctions on both oil and gas deliveries, pushing Europe into an energy supply crisis.

Similarly, progressives have pledged that the EU would not impose sanctions on nuclear energy, but now “they are exerting pressure on the European Commission to initiate sanctions against Hungary’s nuclear industry”, he said. “Nobody should expect Hungary to yield to this unpredictable progressive foreign policy dictated by the Germans”.

Hungary’s foreign policy will remain Hungarian, with decisions taken in Budapest solely to serve national interests, he said.

“We are ready to fight against progressive foreign policy”, adding that Hungary had overcome the pressure by the international liberal mainstream before, when the task had been to tackle an economic crisis and in “keeping migrants out”. “We are also standing our course against the war propaganda… And we will win the fight this time, too,” he said.

The EU’s responses to the war are “ruining” the European economy, he said. The EU has adopted ten sanction packages at a time when the US is taking measures to support local companies, he said.

Hungary, although a small country, has emerged strengthened from previous crises by ignoring “the dictats of the international liberal mainstream” and holding onto its sovereignty and national interests, Szijjarto said.

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