Hungary’s foreign minister has said that the Romanian prime minister’s Tuesday remarks in which he claimed that “Hungarian leaders are no better than the leaders of the countries from where refugees are fleeing” are an insult to the whole of Hungary in a statement sent to the state news agency MTI in the early hours of Wednesday.

Mindless statements

Péter Szijjártó said that the Romanian PM’s “mindless” statements, which drew comparison between Viktor Orbán and the leaders of war-torn Syria and Libya, speak of a “loss of self-control”. “Civilised European politicians do not voice such wild accusations. There is only one explanations for his words, which we protest against in the name of the entire Hungarian nation: the complete loss of ground in Romanian domestic politics”.

The statement comes after the Romanian head of government criticised Hungarian measures made to handle the immigration crisis in a Facebook post published on Tuesday evening, in which he also expressed his “indignation” at the country’s moves which he claims resemble the Europe of the 1930s and 1940s. Later during the evening, Mr. Ponta said on a television programme that Hungary has “excluded itself from Europe”.

Anti-Hungarian lies

On Tuesday, Hungary summoned Romania’s chargé d’affaires over previous remarks made by Victor Ponta, the country’s prime minister, concerning Hungary’s handling of migrants, the foreign ministry said in a statement. Mr. Ponta “has recently been making improper comments” on Hungary’s handling of the migrant crisis, the ministry said. They said state secretary Levente Magyar has expressed the government’s “bafflement” over Ponta’s “continued attempts to save his questionable moral standing through anti-Hungarian lies”. The ministry’s move comes as a response to the Romanian prime minister’s comments that his country would treat migrants like people and “not the way they are treated by our Hungarian neighbour, who herds them with sticks and issues them with serial numbers.”

via mandiner.hu and hungarymatters.hu

photo: nol.hu