The foreign minister said Hungary and Ukraine will reopen all five of their road border crossings by Monday morning.
Péter Szijjártó announced the decision following talks with Dmytro Kuleba, his Ukrainian counterpart, and following the first meeting of the Hungarian-Ukrainian inter-governmental economic mixed committee in seven years, on which the two ministers signed a protocol.
According to MTI, the border crossings will reopen with the current travel regulations remaining in place. The decision comes after László Brenzovics, head of the Transcarpathian Hungarian Cultural Association, asked Budapest to reopen all the border crossings between the two countries with a view to easing the burden on the sole crossing station that had been open up until now between Záhony and Csap. The minister said the Ukrainian government has agreed to this, adding that border officials were discussing the technical aspects of the reopenings.
Thursday’s meeting had also served to lay the groundwork for the prime ministerial summit between Hungarian premier Viktor Orbán and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. Kuleba said Kiev was interested in a productive meeting between the two leaders at the summit it wants to organize next month. The protocol signed on Thursday will serve as the basis for a memorandum the two premiers will sign at the summit, he added.
Meanwhile, Minister Szijjártó underlined the importance of handling the dispute regarding the rights of the country’s ethnic Hungarian community to education and the use of their mother tongue “in a civilised manner so that the issue does not hurt bilateral cooperation in other areas”. “In the interest of maintaining a continued dialogue we’ve agreed to organise meetings of the inter-governmental mixed committees dealing with education and minority affairs, and we hope to get closer to resolving the issues that have led to disputes between the two countries,” he said.
Photo credit: Blikk