Foreign Minister Rastislav Káčer and EU lawmakers strongly criticised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for wearing a scarf with the historical map of Greater Hungary.
Historical Greater Hungary included territory currently owned by Slovakia, but also Romania, Croatia, Serbia and Ukraine. Orbán wore the controversial scarf on Sunday during a meeting with a Hungarian football player.
In an unusually strong statement, Káčer described Orbán’s gesture with the words “disgust and filth”.
The gesture is “out of place and against the spirit and the rules on which the European Union is built,” the Slovak delegation in the European Parliament wrote in a statement published Wednesday.
The statement was initiated by Ivan Štefanec, who is the head of the Slovak delegation to the European People’s Part in the European Parliament. Other Slovak MEPs also signed the statement, not only from the People’s Party but also from the liberal Renew Europe group and the European Conservatives and Reformists group.
Criticism also came from other countries. For example, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský called it “an unacceptable provocation”.
In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Orbán said “soccer is not politics. Do not read things into it that are not there”.
“The Hungarian national team belongs to all Hungarians, wherever they live!”, he added.
Prime ministers of Visegrad four – Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary – will meet on Thursday for the first time since the outbreak of the war. The meeting will take place in the eastern Slovak metropolis Košice – a city, which previously belonged to Hungary.
(Michal Hudec | EURACTIV.sk)
Source: euractiv.com
