The prime minister’s political director Balázs Orbán said Hungarian MPs are waiting for reassurance from Swedish government members in order to be able to support Sweden’s NATO accession with a large majority, similarly to Finland’s accession bid.
Orbán told public radio on Sunday that, “it is clear as day that we support Sweden’s accession, with the government having already passed a decision, and it is now up to parliament, but there is a little problem”. “Some Hungarian MPs do not feel comfortable because they have witnessed in recent years that certain Swedish government members made a habit of continually questioning the state of democracy in Hungary, they kept insulting Hungarian voters and MPs, and through them the whole of Hungary,” he said. Orbán said Hungary did not want to take a position in matters of Swedish domestic political affairs and expects the same from Sweden concerning Hungarian issues. “Hungarian MPs are waiting for reassurance that there are no political debates between them anymore and there are no problems with the basics of Hungarian-Swedish cooperation,” he added. In the case of Finland, there is a “unique historic friendship and alliance,” he said. “It seems that we have managed to get reassurance from the Finns that these problems will not persist in the future” but in the case of Sweden, there is a different situation, he added. Commenting on the Russian-Ukraine war, he said there would be only losers in this war and Europe’s as well as Hungary’s interest lied in a ceasefire and peace talks to start as soon as possible. Commenting on the armed conflict, which was the highlighted topic of the European summit this week, he said Hungary supported the proposals on developing defence cooperation so that member states could protect themselves against any form of military threat. However, it refuses to allow weapons from Hungary to make their way to the Ukrainian-Russian frontier as a result of this cooperation, he added. “We support the joint acquisition of weapons but only the Hungarian army and Hungarian soldiers will receive them, so we maintain the principle that we do not participate in the conflict by way of arms deliveries,” he said.