Szijjarto: EP election to decide ‘if we live in peace or war’

The foreign ministry quoted Peter Szijjarto in a statement as saying that the incumbent leaders of Europe had given “ill-advised responses” to the war in Ukraine, adding that their measures “complemented with misunderstandable remarks” could lead to the conflict “expanding geographically and in time”. In war times “responsible political leaders must be most circumspect not only in their decision making but when they just say something … in a war environment talking about sending troops or mentioning a nuclear war is the greatest possible mistake and the largest irresponsibility,” Szijjarto insisted.

Szijjarto said the EU’s sanctions against Russia had resulted in unprecedentedly high inflation in Europe. He said Hungary’s annual energy spending of 7 billion euros had shot up to 17 billion euros, which resulted in “higher prices for all products … that is how we ended up having 27 percent inflation rather than the usual one or two percent,” he said. “And not because we are stupid or got the economic policy wrong or made three or four bad decisions, but only because of that misguided response of Brussels,” he said.

Concerning plans to increase NATO’s coordinating role in weapons shipments to Ukraine and in the training of Ukrainian soldiers, as well as giving Ukraine a 100 billion euro aid package, Szijjarto reiterated that “Hungary won’t participate in that … it will be a fight for the near future as NATO would not want to create a precedent for allowing an ally to stay away from one of its operations.”

“All this can only be stopped if Donald Trump wins the US presidential election and, on the other hand, the European Parliament’s right wing gets strong enough to oust the current, idle and comfortable majority,” Szijjarto said.