According to Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó it is “astonishing and highly unusual for a democratic country to begin financing media on the territory of an allied democratic country using its own public resources”.

Mr. Szijjártó made the statement at a press conference held on a different topic on Wednesday in reply to a question concerning why the Ministry had summoned the American Embassy’s Chargé D’affaires.

With relation to the U.S. Embassy’s tender for rural media outlets, the Minster asked: “What’s this, if not interference in internal affairs?!”

Mr. Szijjártó said that several questions had been put to the U.S. State Department, to which the Ministry is awaiting a reply. For instance, we asked in how many other allied countries the United States has launched similar tenders and in which Washington office are they capable of assessing a tender that has been submitted by a medium operating in a Hungarian county and “to what extent they intend to provide balanced news”, he added.

“We reject all politics that want to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries; we do not do so and expect our allies to also refrain from doing so”, the Foreign Minister declared.

Mr. Szijjártó said the Government would decide on the tender in January. “What’s this, if not interference in the election campaign and in Hungary’s internal political processes?”, he said.

In reply to another question, the Foreign Minister said he was surprised that an opportunity such as the National Consultation process, which enables as many people as possible to be included in public affairs and allows them to express their opinion on issues that fundamentally affect the future of the nation is being criticised in Brussels, which many people regard as “a bastion of democracy”.

This criticism “is not a judgement on us or the Consultation, but on those who are voicing this criticism”, he said.

“It would be good if the representatives of the European Parliament entrusted decisions on our affairs to us and the principle of mutual respect were to appear”, he noted.

(MTI)