Hungarian delegates to meet Swedish and Finnish lawmakers for talks on NATO accession bid
March 7th, 2023The government side finds it necessary to clarify the position of the two Nordic countries about Hungary before the Hungarian Parliament ratifies their accession to NATO, while a left-wing commentator decries what he sees as the loss of Hungary’s ‘last friend’ – Finland.
On HIRTV, Parliament Speaker László Kövér said he sent a delegation of two MPs and two MEPs to Finland and Sweden to clarify the stance of those two countries about Hungary. Representatives of the two nations, he said, have hurled weighty insults at Hungary and demanded that EU funds be withheld, which has caused both moral and material damage to Hungarians. Under such conditions, he deemed it appropriate to send a delegation to make things clear before Parliament votes on their NATO accession.
In Népszava, Miklós Hargitai accuses the government of destroying a 250-year-old special friendship between Hungary and Finland. A Hungarian scientist discovered the structural similarity of the two languages in the late 18th century and Finnish people have since grown increasingly friendly towards Hungarians, he writes. Nowadays, Hargitai continues, Hungary has remained without international friends; now even Poland is estranged because of differences over the war in Ukraine. Finns were Hungary’s last friends in the world, he concludes, and he finds the government guilty of squandering that 250-year-old heritage.