Hungary should leave the European Union if its government is so unhappy with the treatment it receives from Brussels, Poland’s deputy foreign minister has claimed.
Władysław Teofil Bartoszewski deepened the rift between Warsaw and Budapest on Sunday by suggesting Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán seek a political union with Russia and its allies as he accused the government in Budapest of promoting “anti-European, anti-Ukrainian, and anti-Polish” policies.
“Why doesn’t [Orbán] create a Union with Putin and some authoritarian states of this type? If you don’t want to be a member of a club, you can always leave,” Bartoszewski said.
“I don’t really understand why Hungary wants to remain a member of organizations that it doesn’t like so much and which supposedly treat it so badly,” he added.
Bartoszewski’s remarks were in response to criticism of the new liberal government in Warsaw by Orbán at a speech in Romania on Saturday.
Speaking in Băile Tușnad, a region of Romania with a large ethnic Hungarian population, the Hungarian leader accused Poland of grave hypocrisy as its government berates Budapest for its relations with Russia while Poland conducts similar business through back channels.
“Poles are conducting hypocritical policies. They criticize us for our relations with the Russians, and they themselves conduct business with Russia through intermediaries,” Orbán told the crowd at the annual Bálványos Free Summer University and Student Camp.
“I have never seen such hypocrisy on the part of the state,” he added.
Warsaw condemned the remarks with Bartoszewski insisting, “We do not do business with Russia, unlike Prime Minister Orbán, who is on the margins of international society – both in the European Union and NATO.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s liberal government has been irked by Budapest’s opposition to Warsaw receiving compensatory funds from the European Union for military equipment donated to Ukraine.
Hungary has blocked a reported figure of around €2 billion that Poland expects from the European Peace Facility, a financial instrument outside of the EU budget that needs sign-off from all member states to be accessed.
“The government has been repeatedly communicating to Hungary at all possible levels that we are dissatisfied with the fact that Hungary has, for a year now, been blocking refunds for the military equipment we delivered to Ukraine,” Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said earlier this month.
His deputy, Bartoszewski has claimed the dispute is greatly affecting the Polish-Hungarian relationship.
“There used to be a saying ‘Pole and Hungarian brothers be’ but this is a big family row,” he warned.
