Pál Barna Zsigmond quoted European Council President Charles Michel as saying that he was reassured and hopeful concerning the Hungarian presidency, and noted that currently Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was the only head of government in the EU that would head the rotating presidency for the second time.

He said Hungary’s 2011 presidency had been successful, adding that “on basis of those experiences the Hungarian government is getting ready for the next one.”

Szijjártó: Hungarian Diplomacy Gave Right Responses to Recent Years' Challenges

Hungarian diplomacy always gave the right responses during the serious challenges of recent years, while Brussels failed in its reactions to crises, the foreign minister said.

Péter Szijjártó told parliament’s European affairs committee that Hungary’s foreign policy was Hungarian and sovereign, its sole purpose being the enforcement of Hungarian interests, often in the face of being outnumbered. Opposition lawmakers said ahead of the meeting that they would not attend it.

Hungary’s foreign policy was also sensible, pragmatic and rational, setting targets that have positive effects on Hungarian people’s lives, involving a strong focus on foreign economic policy, the minister said. Hungary’s foreign policy is open in all directions, and it aims to attract friends and cooperative partners who consider mutual respect a basis of their foreign policy, he said.

“It does not seek conflict but is not afraid to accept it,” he added. “Now, in the era of dangers, this approach in foreign policy has even greater significance,” he added.

In the past five years, three crisis situations had to be faced and responses had to be found that enabled Hungary to overcome the crisis by becoming stronger, he added.

“A solution had to be found to the pandemic, but we did not sit idly, watching Hungarians die as a result of the messed-up vaccine acquisition of the European Commission,” he said. He added that the economic management of the crisis had also been successful, with more people holding jobs after the pandemic than before.

Purely national interests were taken into consideration when, in order to guarantee Hungary’s secure energy supplies, cooperation with Russia was not given up after the war started in the neighbouring country, he said.

As a neighbouring country, Hungary managed to stay out of the war, and Hungarians did not make a single decision that would have contributed to the increase in the number of deaths, he added.

Commenting on the crisis in the Middle East, he said all Hungarians had been successfully evacuated and three Hungarian hostages freed.

The EU, he said, had failed in all the crisis situations of recent years, which was why they were not able to accept that Hungary had a successful, patriotic, sovereigntist government which went against the Brussels mainstream. The variety of responses given to crises has made it clear to all European citizens that in Hungary there was a more successful alternative to the liberal mainstream, he said.

“This is why they try to attack Hungary from Brussels by all possible means, in collaboration with the Hungarian left,” he added. In the communist era, there were also some Hungarians who acted against Hungarian interests in the centre of the empire, and the same was happening in Brussels currently, he said.

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