BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungary’s foreign minister voiced indifference on Tuesday over a decision by the European Union’s top diplomat to shift an EU ministers’ meeting from Budapest to Brussels in a sign of disapproval over Hungary’s initial use of the EU presidency.
“It was all the same to me in the beginning, and it’s all the same to me now,” Peter Szijjarto said in a statement.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell acted after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban began a self-styled Ukraine peace mission by holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Orban, a nationalist who has often been at odds with broader EU policy, embarked on his quest without coordinating it with other EU government leaders or Ukraine just days after Hungary took on the 27-bloc’s rotating presidency on July 1.
“We have to send a signal, even if it is a symbolic signal,” Borrell told reporters in Brussels on Monday after the last meeting of EU foreign ministers before the summer break.
Borrell said there had been no consensus among EU members over whether to attend the ministerial meeting in the Hungarian capital Budapest, planned for Aug. 28-29 – and a gathering of defence ministers afterwards.
He said he opted to switch both meetings to Brussels given that a majority of countries wanted to send a message to Hungary over Orban’s outreach to Russia, which is subject to EU sanctions over its 2-1/2-year-old invasion of Ukraine.
(Reporting by Boldizsar Gyori; editing by Alan Charlish and Mark Heinrich)
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