EU drops Hungary meeting over Orban’s visits to Moscow and Beijing

YEREVAN, JULY 23, ARMENPRESS. The European Union's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, stripped Hungary on Monday of its role as host of an EU foreign ministers meeting in a sign of widespread anger in the bloc at Budapest's overtures to Russia about the war in Ukraine, Reuters reports.

Borrell said the meeting planned for Budapest in late August would now take place in Brussels, after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban visited Moscow and Beijing without EU backing and his government branded EU policy as "pro-war".

"We have to send a signal, even if it is a symbolic signal," Borrell told reporters in Brussels after a last meeting of EU foreign ministers before the summer break.

Borrell refused to use the word “boycotting”, saying that Hungary will be sitting at the informal meeting “be it in Budapest, be it in Brussels or be it somewhere else.”

Hungary took on the 27-nation EU's rotating presidency on July 1, shortly after which Orban visited Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing, branding his visits as “peace missions”. Many in the EU strongly condemned Orban’s visits stressing that he did not act on behalf of the EU.

According to Reuters, many EU countries consider Hungary to be too close to Moscow, undermining EU efforts to isolate Russia politically and diplomatically over its war in Ukraine since 2022. 

On July 5, Orban met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, where the two sides discussed the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine and potential ways of starting peace negotiations. Earlier, on July 3, Orban was in Kyiv, where he discussed those issues with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. On July 8, PM Orban met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, after which he met former U.S. President Donald Trump in the USA.