Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said Hungary “refuses to even discuss” the European financing of further weapon deliveries to Ukraine until Kyiv restores the rights of Hungarian minorities in the country and removes Hungarian bank OTP from the list of international financiers of the war.
After an informal meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Toledo, Spain, Minister Szijjártó said the discussion on the war again made it clear that the voice of peace must be strengthened, “because the overwhelming majority is still busy talking about the war." The majority took a stand for maintaining weapon deliveries, he said. That approach and an EU proposal that would earmark an annual 5 billion euros for military aid in the next four years showed that “everyone is calculating with a long war”, the minister added. “Unfortunately, I was once again the only one to speak out against that approach today. We don’t want another four years of war; we want it to end as soon as possible,” he said. Hungary was under enormous pressure to vote for the next 500 million euro instalment for weapon deliveries for Ukraine and a 20 billion euro package for the next 4 years, he said. That would mean that some 80 billion forints (EUR 210.4m) of Hungarian taxpayer money, “who bear no responsibility for the war”, would go towards that effort, he said.