“We are continuing to do everything to protect the health and life of the Hungarian people, to bring home Hungarians who have been stranded abroad, and to reboot the economy as soon as possible”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said at an online press conference on Friday.

The Minister reported on the meeting of European Union foreign ministers, which was held within the framework of a videoconference.

“The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy convened the meeting to determine the responses needed to the coronavirus pandemic, and we discussed the tasks and measures required in view of the situation”, he stated.

“It has once again become clear that every member state is making national-based decisions; everyone is making the decisions aimed at successful protection based on their own national conditions, legal system and interests, and these national decisions correspond to the current healthcare and economic situation”, Mr. Szijjártó told the press.  The Minister said that in his opinion: “National solutions generally and fundamentally work, but the significance of brussels coordination has been reduced to a minimum, and on this occasion too the fact that unity is important and we are ‘a European team’, was voiced as more of a communications element”.

“The primary task of every country is to protect the health and life of its citizens, and this is also what we are doing; protective equipment is continuously arriving in Hungary in the interests of successful healthcare protection”, the Foreign Minister explained, pointing out that “Everyone is acquiring equipment from the same direction and source, primarily from China”.

The Minister pointed out that on Saturday six planes will be bringing four million facemasks and hundreds of thousands of pieces of protective clothing to Hungary, and further shipments are also expected.

“Bringing home EU citizens was also discussed at the meeting. Hungary is performing the largest repatriation operation in its history, and has helped over six thousand Hungarians return home to date”, he mentioned.

“We have either performed these operations ourselves, or in cooperation with other countries, and coordination by Brussels is extremely late”, he stated.

Mr. Szijjártó said rebooting the economy had also been a topic of discussion at the meeting. “Although the border security measures aimed at protecting people’s health and curbing the rate of spread of the virus are legitimate, continuous freight transport must also be assured so people are supplied”, he explained.

He highlighted that at the meeting he had raised the fact that there are those who in recent days have attacked Hungary. “While thousands of people are dying each day throughout Europe, there are still those whose greatest task is to worry about the state of the rule of law in Hungary, despite the fact that everyone at the meeting spoke about European unity”, he said. “In recent days, political leaders from European Union member states have again spread astonishing lies about us”, he added.

“European leaders from some European Union member states have spread fake news and lies about Hungary in recent days, claiming that parliament is not in session, while in fact I myself will also be making a speech at the plenary session next week”, he stated. “They have also said that we have been given an opportunity to ‘build a dictatorship’, whereas the government has simply been given a mandate to make decisions relating to protecting against the pandemic”, he pointed out.

The Foreign Minister noted that he had asked his European colleagues to read the legislation before talking about it.

He stressed that he had also asked his European counterparts to “not be hypocritical and talk about European unity”, whole some of them are contributing to the continuous spreading of fake news about Hungary within the EU.

Mr. Szijjártó said that later in the day he will be meeting with the leaders of ten Hungarian enterprises that play a significant role in Hungarian exports.

(Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister/MTI)