Beijing considers Hungary an important partner in Europe.Continue reading
After thirteen years, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has become used to being referred to as the European Union’s black sheep by the Western mainstream media, but French President Emmanuel Macron rarely has such bad press as he currently does.
The French President has come under fire for an interview after his three-day official visit to China. According to news site Politico, Emmanuel Macron told journalists that Europe must reduce its dependency on the United States and avoid getting dragged into a confrontation between China and the US over Taiwan. He said “the great risk” Europe faces is that it “gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy.”
According to Macron, the main goal of his visit was to ensure that China plays a role in forging peace in Ukraine. “Do we agree with everything [in China’s plan]?” he said, according to Politico, referring to China’s 12-point peace plan unveiled in February. “No,” he said. “However, it shows … a will to play a responsible role and try to build a pathway to peace.”
Even the most benign articles in the Western press accused Macron of making a diplomatic blunder, but he received much harsher criticism too. “We will work to ensure that your remarks serve as a wake-up call to democratic governments to do everything possible to ensure that Beijing’s aggressive stance towards Taiwan receives the hostile reception it deserves from the international community,” the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China wrote in a statement signed by several European MPs.
Reinhard Butiköfer, an MEP who chairs the European parliament’s China delegation, described Macron’s China visit as a “complete disaster,” according to The Guardian, while German newspaper Die Welt declared that Macron’s idea of Europe’s strategic autonomy is dangerous and an illusion.
Similarly to the French leader, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also attaches importance to China’s role in the settlement in Ukraine. He expressed his support for the Chinese peace plan in parliament early last month. Shortly afterwards, he was received in Paris at a working dinner by Emmanuel Macron, with whom he also discussed the war in Ukraine. Viktor Orbán will visit Beijing in the autumn.
In a not-too-subtle threat towards dissenting nations, Dalibor Rohac, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in the New York Post:
The French might enjoy the luxury of thinking that their alliance with the United States is optional. Very few European governments – with the possible exception of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary – share that view.”
Featured photo via Twitter/SpokespersonCHN