Parliamentarians of respective EU countries have complained to their Hungarian counterpart on Orban

The president of the Parliamentary Committees of the Baltic States, Finland, Germany and Luxembourg, supported by Poland, sent a letter to their Hungarian counterpart, complaining that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban allegedly provokes European partners and weakens the position of the EU with his peace initiative on Ukraine.

Hungary took over the EU Council Presidency on 1 July for six months.

"We are profoundly afraid about the first 3 weeks of the Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the EU due to the fact that the basic principles have been ignored .... alternatively of building bridges, the Hungarian Prime Minister utilized the first days of the Presidency to provoke European partners, putting his own interests above the European consensus," says a letter to the president of the Committee on EU Affairs of the Hungarian Parliament, published on the Lithuanian Sejm website.

The letter's authors named Orban's travels to Moscow "obtrusive" and stated that the Hungarian Prime Minister allegedly "constantly weakens the EU's position and hinders peace in Ukraine".

"If the Hungarian government continues to troll its European partners, it will in the long word harm their own national interests. European governments will lose religion that the objectives of the Hungarian government are in line with any European interests. This will origin immense harm to the objectives of the Hungarian Presidency in the EU", added the letter.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban arrived in Moscow with a delegation on 5 July and met Russian president Vladimir Putin. A visit to Moscow called the next phase of the peace mission, the beginning of which was a journey to Kiev on 2 July. Later, he went to Beijing, where he said that Hungary was opposed to confronting China and advocated EU-China cooperation. After Beijing, the Hungarian Prime Minister went to Washington for the NATO summit, on the margins of which he met Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He then held talks with erstwhile U.S. president Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

After a visit to China, Orban said that the resolution of the crisis in Ukraine depends on the parties to the conflict, but the USA, China and the EU have a decisive influence on its ending. The Hungarian Prime Minister then presented to all EU leaders his plan to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, based on a realistic assessment of the situation, realistic objectives and deadlines. Orban published a 10-point study for the head of the Charles Michel European Council.

Russian President's spokesperson Dmitri Pieskov said that Orban showed a political will for dialogue, and Moscow considers it very affirmative and useful. The head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell said that Orban does not represent the EU on the abroad phase and there is no European mandate to visit Russia, despite the six-month presidency of his country in the EU Council. Orban responded to Borrel's criticism, saying that the efforts to establish peace in Ukraine have not been successful due to the "pleasures of Brussels bureaucrats".

Daniel Głogowski

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