"Given that we have a lot of shared waters", with several rivers crossing the Romania-Hungary border, it is important that the two countries cooperate in the interest of preventing pollution, Szijjártó said.Continue reading
The opposition Jobbik has petitioned Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó to take diplomatic steps with a view to stopping the flow of waste on rivers from Romania to Hungary.
Béla Adorján, Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county councillor, on Friday noted at a press conference that Jobbik had tried to present a petition to the Romanian Embassy a week ago.
Two days ago, however, another huge wave of waste reached Hungary’s border on the Szamos river, he said.
Lawmaker Csaba Gyüre said that the floodplains of the Upper Tisza region had been flooded with plastic bottles.
Gyüre said he had turned to the foreign ministry, which cited the Romanian side as saying that the problem “has been almost totally settled”, with the waste filtered out on the Romanian sections of the rivers. The recent developments, however, indicated the opposite, he said.
Gyüre asked Szijjártó to take action to ensure that the Romanian authorities responsible put an end to pollution, eliminate illegal rubbish dumps on the catchment areas and monitor the industrial facilities and farms that emit hazardous materials.
He also stressed the need to set up a monitoring system which would alert Hungarian experts about waste approaching Hungary’s border.
MEP Márton Gyöngyösi, deputy leader of Jobbik, requested that Szijjártó turn directly to the Romanian government and that Hungarian diplomacy lobby the UN and EU institutions to help resolve the situation.
Featured image: Bence Párdy picks up PET bottles from a bay on the bank of the Tisza on September 22, 2019. Photo by Zoltán Balogh/MTI