‘Brussels today is crossing the Rubicon. At noon, a written vote will be launched that will cause irreparable damage to the Union,’ Viktor Orbán wrote on Facebook in response to the European Union’s attempt to freeze Russian assets indefinitely by qualified majority.
On Thursday the EU approved a legal mechanism that would permanently freeze 210 billion euros worth of Russian state assets in Europe, bypassing Hungary’s veto. According to index.hu, the new mechanism abolishes the current rules requiring EU member states to renew sanctions unanimously every six months.
‘With one stroke of the pen, Brussels is abolishing the unanimity requirement, in blatant contravention of the law,’ the Hungarian prime minister said. He added that ‘with today’s decision, the rule of law in the European Union is disappearing and European leaders are placing themselves above the rules’.
The European Commission, he said, does not oversee compliance with the EU treaties but ‘systematically rapes European law’. According to Orbán, the reason is the Union’s desire to ‘continue the apparently unwinnable war in Ukraine’.
The Hungarian leader promised that his country ‘will do everything to restore the rule of law’.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó on Friday described remarks made on Thursday by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte as a ‘clear signal that everyone in Brussels has turned against the peace efforts of US President Donald Trump’, in a post on Facebook.
Rutte said during a speech in Berlin that ‘we [NATO] are Russia’s next target’. Szijjártó described this as proof that ‘in Brussels, all... common sense has failed’.
‘With this statement, the NATO Secretary General has practically stabbed the peace negotiations in the back,’ the minister said.
Speaking on behalf of Hungary, Szijjártó rejected Rutte’s remarks. ‘The security of European countries is not guaranteed by Ukraine but by NATO itself. Ukraine is fighting for itself, not for us. Such provocative statements are irresponsible and dangerous. We call on Mark Rutte to stop inciting war tensions,’ he concluded.
(reuters, luc)