Deputy State Secretary Prőhle noted that it was Peer Steinbrück, the German Social Democrats' (SPD) candidate for Chancellor, who raised the possibility of excluding Hungary from the European Union in a televised debate with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday. In response, Merkel defended Hungary and, referring to an earlier statement by Steinbrück about Switzerland, she stated that it was "not necessary to send in the cavalry right away," Mr Prőhle added.

On the following day in a radio interview Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said, in allusion to the comment made by Peer Steinbrück, that "the Germans, in the past, sent their cavalry against Hungary, in the form of tanks, and we ask them now not to send them again. It was not a good idea, it did not work."

"Orbán actually commented on Steinbrück's words and not Merkel's," Deputy State Secretary Gergely Prőhle said. Contrary to what Spiegel Online claimed, "it is out of question that anybody would interpret this as a realistic possibility," he added.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle criticised Viktor Orbán's remark during his visit in Belgrade yesterday, calling it a "deplorable derailment which we clearly reject".

Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs