Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó held talks with his Belarusian and Nigerian counterparts via telephone on Tuesday.

In a Facebook post, Mr. Szijjártó said he had first been called by head of Belarusian diplomacy Vladimir Makei, with whom he maintains a particularly good personal relationship, and with whom he is able to speak openly in view of their mutual respect.

“He told me how he sees his homeland’s domestic political situation. And I told him that we have an interest in maintaining communication”, the politician wrote, adding: “Belarus is part of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership Program, and we cannot pretend that the events that are occurring there have no geopolitical aspect”. According to Mr. Szijjártó, it would be important for a broad social dialogue to come about in Belarus, because “only this can result in a solution that is realised within the country’s constitutional framework”.

Later, the Hungarian Foreign Minister held talks with his Nigerian counterpart Geoffrey Onyeama with relation to the election of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Director-General. “I told him that Hungary has given its consent to the European Union uniformly supporting the Korean and Nigerian candidates in the second round of the election”, he wrote. “I did not, however, tell him that I had serious concerns with the procedure with which the European Commission established this ‘consensus’. Because a consensus is usually achieved at the negotiating table, not via threats and blackmail”, he added.

According to Mr. Szijjártó, in a manner that is extremely precarious from a legal perspective, the European Commission threatened everyone who was of a different opinion with infringement proceedings, whereas they were unable to put forward any professional arguments that could be taken seriously against the Kenyan or British candidates. “Hungary eventually decided to back the joint position.  Not least because that also came to include supporting the Korean Minister of Trade, who he knows well and has great respect for, and who represents the country that was responsible for the largest volume of foreign investment in Hungary last year”, the Minister added, noting: “Nevertheless, the procedure did little to improve the reputation of the European Union”.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade/MTI)