Diplomatic scuffles with Romania
August 14th, 2015A left-wing commentator criticises Hungary’s ambassador to Bucharest, who expressed dissatisfaction with the policies of the Romanian government towards ethnic Hungarians in Romania.
In Népszabadság, Levente Szűcs thinks the Ambassador, Botond Zákonyi was right when he remarked (in an interview with a Bucharest daily) that nothing has been done to grant autonomy to the Hungarian majority regions in Romania. But warns that ambassadors are not expected to criticise the governments of their host countries, even if their criticism is fully justified. No wonder that Prime Minister Victor Ponta immediately reacted by calling the ambassador’s words “a provocation”. Since the Hungarian government has not done anything to distance itself from the ambassador’s words, Szőcs believes he must have acted with his ministry’s consent. All the more so, he explains, since in his annual address to the Transylvanian Summer University (See BudaPost, July 28), Prime Minister Orbán held the left-wing Romanian government responsible for the “low temperature” in bilateral relations. In fact, the leaders of the two countries have not met for years and joint projects are at a standstill.