Emergency assistance, for example, must be provided in the minorities' own language, if it is understood by all parties.Continue reading
Although the EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting acknowledged for the first time that the global majority wants immediate peace in Ukraine, the greater portion of member States continue to push for a military solution, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said in Luxembourg.
The minister underlined that many people in Ukraine are victims of war, the possibility of increasingly serious natural disasters is growing, and there is also increasing talk of nuclear accidents.
There is no battlefield solution to this war, only a negotiated one. Unfortunately, however, today’s meeting of the Foreign Ministers also showed that the vast majority of Member States and the European Union itself insist on a military solution.”
Péter Szijjártó said that those who put the military solution before a diplomatic settlement are responsible for the continuing death toll and natural disasters, increasing the cost of reconstruction in Ukraine, which will undoubtedly be a European-led process in the future.
However, he pointed out that serious questions need to be raised before any decision is made about the financing of the latter, such as what resources would be used and what impact it would have on the development funds of EU Member States.
The minister then touched on the recent report of the Venice Commission, stating that Ukraine is not respecting its obligations in the field of the rights of national communities.
“The situation is that the rights of national communities and national minorities in Ukraine have been dismantled practically since 2015,”
he emphasized.
“If all this continues and Ukraine does not restore the rights of the Hungarian national community in Transcarpathia, they will not be ready to start accession negotiations with the European Union, and we will of course not be able to give our support,” he said.
“So we expect Ukraine to comply with the EU rules, obligations, and expectations which are laid down in international treaties and which relate to how the rights of national communities are to be guaranteed,” he added.
In response to a journalist’s question, Szijjártó said that the armed conflict between the private military company, Wagner Group, and the Russian military leadership over the weekend was being closely monitored so that the government could take timely action if necessary, as such events could have an impact on the security situation in the whole region.
He said that on Sunday, he had spoken on the telephone with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yenis Manturov and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, who had briefed him on the situation and expected developments.
“In hindsight, I have to say that both of them gave information that turned out to be realistic and true,”
he underlined.
The conflict was finally resolved after a telephone conversation between Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and the head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Via MTI, Featured image via Facebook/Szijjártó Péter