The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary, Péter Szijártó, is dissatisfied with the decision to resume the work of the "Ukraine-NATO" commission at the level of heads of foreign affairs.
He wrote about this on Facebook on April 4.
"A one-and-a-half-day meeting of NATO foreign ministers begins. We have come here with the hope that no one will question the validity of our previous joint decision that NATO is not a party to the war going on in our neighborhood and that everything must be done to prevent the development of a direct conflict between NATO and Russia. The invitation of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine [Dmytro Kuleba] violates the principle of unity of NATO allies, but we participate in the meeting in a constructive spirit. I will also clarify now that Hungary will support any integration efforts of Ukraine only and exclusively if the Ukrainians return to the Transcarpathian Hungarians the rights they had before 2015," Szijarto wrote.
- On April 3, it became known that the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba will take part in the meeting of the "Ukraine-NATO" commission in Brussels on April 3-4. This is the first meeting of the commission at the level of foreign ministers with the participation of Ukraine in six years. Since 2017, Hungary has blocked meetings at the ministerial level. In this way, Budapest protested against Ukrainian laws on language and education.
- In September 2017, the Verkhovna Rada adopted the Law "On Education". Budapest decided that the document limited the rights of the Hungarian community in Transcarpathia and took a number of unfriendly diplomatic steps, including blocking the decision of the Ukraine-NATO commission.