“The two-day Council of Europe conference ended on Friday with few results”, Parliamentary State Secretary and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Levente Magyar said in a statement to public media.

The Deputy Minister pointed out that important issues such as the European Parliament elections, the future of Europe and the preservation of European values were not discussed at length. Mr. Magyar told the press that the conference had been organised to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Council of Europe, and the topics of discussion included a summary of the experiences of the past seven decades.

He pointed out that the Council of Europe is a much older organisation than the European Union, and its main task is to hold together the continent’s countries according to certain values. “It has, however, been unable to fulfil this goal in recent ears”, the Deputy Minister said.

As an example, he mentioned the fact that minority rights are being trampled into the dirt in Ukraine, and the Council of Europe has achieved nothing in the interests of preventing this. At the meeting, the Hungarian party said that in future the organisation should defend all kinds of human and minority rights, which are particularly important to the Hungarians, according to a new way of thinking.

With relation to the most important issue discussed at the conference, Russia’s membership of the Council of Europe, Mr. Magyar said Hungary did not become actively involved in debating this issue, explaining that the “larger countries fought this boxing match among themselves” with a result that is also in Hungary’s interests. It would currently seem that Russia will remain a member of the organisation.

The Deputy Minister pointed out that Russia had de facto been suspended within the organisation for the occupation of Crimea, in response to which Russia began reducing its contributions, which caused financial difficulties for the organisation’s budget. “According to Hungary’s position, conflicts should be resolved through dialogue, and not with ultimatums and suspensions. It would now seem that the situation will be resolved, but if this does not occur, the consequences could be unforeseeable, and could isolate Russia from the continent”, Mr. Magyar declared.

(MTI)