Member state reminds EU ‘it’s not a security bloc’
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto condemned the EU’s efforts to pressure his country into fast-tracking Ukraine’s accession for “security reasons,” during a press conference on Monday.
Speaking after an EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Luxembourg, Szijjarto insisted that “The European Union is not a security organization, it is a political-economic integration, so it is completely unacceptable for us to justify a country’s future membership solely for security reasons.” He accused Brussels of trying to fast-track Ukraine’s accession to the bloc.
Funding the installation of arms production or military training facilities in Ukraine, as the European Commission did with a €20 billion ($21 billion) proposal for security guarantees during the meeting, was also “completely unacceptable,” Szijjarto continued. He pointed out that the country was still an active conflict zone and placing EU assets there would “immediately drag the European Union into war.”
In addition to promoting military investment in Ukraine and further sanctions on Russia, the proposal earmarked €5 billion for new arms deliveries to Kiev every year for the next four years – numbers that made no sense in the absence of continued fighting, the foreign minister pointed out.
“So everything about the war is in it, but unfortunately there is still nothing in this proposal that talks about how there will be peace. Clearly, the European approach, the Brussels approach to the events in Ukraine is still pro-war,” he lamented, arguing the bloc is infected with “war psychosis.”
Meanwhile, Szijjarto said, some of his colleagues were admitting to “Ukraine fatigue,” meaning that public interest in the conflict was waning, especially given the outbreak of new hostilities in the Middle East. This only increased the urgency of ending the conflict in Ukraine, he said, warning that the conditions for peace would only worsen as more men died on the battlefield.
The Hungarian diplomat has repeatedly counseled the EU against the “serious mistakes” it is making in funding and arming the Ukrainian military while antagonizing Russia, warning that continuing to supply arms will only prolong the conflict and lead to more killing.
Last month, Szijjarto stated that Hungary would block Ukraine’s accession to the EU as long as it continued to discriminate against the Hungarian ethnic minority living in the western part of the country, pointing to several controversial laws enacted since the 2014 US-backed coup in Kiev that have mandated the use of the Ukrainian language.
