Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó called the latest report on democratic rights by Freedom House nonsense in a statement to the press in Budapest on Thursday.
In its report reviewing 2015 entitled Nations in Transit published on Tuesday, the American non-profit organisation stated that the quality of democratic government in Hungary has worsened since last year.
“The contents of the report are nonsense, as is the fact that people sitting around in offices thousands of miles away from Budapest want to tell us what state Hungary is in”, Mr. Szijjártó said.
The fact that they want to “downgrade” Hungary because of its standpoint on the immigration crisis is also nonsense, he added.
The Minister called it incomprehensible that criticism of Hungary’s response to the immigration crisis is coming from a country that built a wall along its southern border, not just a fence, and in whose presidential election campaign every possible opinion and its exact opposite is being voiced.
“We have been elected by the people of Hungary; our task and responsibility is to act in the interests of the Hungarian people and according to their security requirements. What motivates us isn’t earning words of acknowledgement from people sitting around in offices thousands of miles away”, Mr. Szijjártó explained.
(MTI)