Szijjardo’s visit to Minsk in February was against EU policy

The European Parliament regretted Foreign and Trade Minister Peter Szijardo’s visit to Minsk in February. The resolution was passed on Wednesday About Belarus. The EP stresses the importance of strengthening the EU’s solidarity against Belarus, “including the diplomatic isolation of the current regime”. The parliament “condemns all actions, including high-level visits to the executive authorities in Minsk, which raise doubts about the clear recognition of the union by the Belarusian leadership”.

“In this context, he regrets the visit of Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijardo to Minsk on February 13, 2023, which contradicts EU policy regarding Russia’s aggressive war against Belarus and Ukraine.”

During a visit to Minsk in February, Peter Szijardo said, “After you spread the news that I am here today and that I discussed the importance of peace with my Belarusian colleague, it is clear that many people will attack me. My fellow Western politicians and the international liberal media are all here today. And the negotiations with my Belarusian colleague will tell you how bad it was. I would like to say one thing to this. The Hungarian position has always been clear: communication channels must remain open”.

Gál Kinga, head of the Fidesz European Parliamentary Group, after Wednesday’s decision was adopted on Facebook

The document called it “unprecedented and unacceptable to openly criticize a foreign minister of an EU member state and mention Peter Szyjardo by name”.

The purpose of joint EP decisions is to indicate “general political guidelines at the strategic level”, “not fights and political activities at the level of party politics, so I did not support the decision with my vote”. (Fidesz left the largest populist bloc in 2021 to avoid its growing exclusion, and since then its representatives have sat among independents.) Vote registration Together with Gál Kinga, all voting members of the Fidesz delegation said no to the entire text. Together with them, the resolution was adopted with a total of 557 votes in favor and 40 abstentions (including KDNP’s Giorgi Holveni).

Text without legal effect condemns, the Belarusian leadership is constantly and systematically suppressing the country’s people and expressing dissent through closed-door cases for political purposes. (A few days earlier, in absentia, one of the Belarusian opposition leaders, Svetlana Tykhanovskaya, was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.)

Delegates again strongly condemned Belarus’ role in Russia’s war against Ukraine, which they say the regime is complicit in Russian state terrorism and should be hit with broad economic sanctions.