The opposition news portal 444.hu alleged in an article that the insistence of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to remove remarks critical to China from a joint V4-Japan declaration was the reason for the “failure” of the mini-summit. The meeting happened on the fringes of last week’s annual Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Brussels.
The ministry said the 444.hu article was a “typical piece of misinformation, fake news”. While the ministry did not comment on the closed session of the meeting, it did say that prior to the V4-Japan meeting Babiš asked Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo not to issue a joint statement, on the grounds that the V4 as a group had no competence in matters of global policy.
According to Magyar Hírlap, Orbán arrived late to the meeting due to a previous presidency meeting of the European People’s Party. Other sources also said that the meeting was successful in economic terms and the Japanese Prime Minister also commended the V4 states for their migration policies.
Title image: V4-Japan meeting in Brussels. From left to right: Viktor Orbán, Andrej Babiš, Abe Shinzo, Peter Pellegrini and Mateusz Morawiecki. (Prime Minister’s Press Office).
