The European Commission is continuing to press for clarification after reports that Hungary has passed on internal EU information to Russia.<\/p>\n
Journalistic reports have pointed to “the alarming possibility of a member state’s government coordinating with Russia, thus actively working against the security and the interests of the EU and all its citizens,” a spokeswoman for the European Commission said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“This is therefore extremely concerning, and it is for the member state’s government in question to explain itself as a matter of urgency,” she said, adding that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen would also raise the issue among EU leaders.<\/p>\n
A network of European investigative platforms have suggested that Hungarian Foreign Minister P\u00e9ter Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 regularly passed on internal EU information to his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.<\/p>\n
The platforms base their claims on intercepted telephone conversations between Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 and Lavrov, which are said to have been obtained by Western intelligence services.<\/p>\n
Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 is also said to have called his Russian counterpart on December 14, 2023, during a break in negotiations at an EU summit focused on the start of accession talks for Ukraine and Moldova.<\/p>\n
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest ally in the EU – threatened to veto the move unless the EU released \u20ac22 billion in frozen EU aid for Budapest.<\/p>\n
According to the investigative outlet VSquare, Lavrov told Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 over the phone: “Sometimes good-willed direct blackmailing is the best option.”<\/p>\n
In the end, however, neither Orb\u00e1n’s veto nor the release of EU funds materialized, with the Hungarian minister simply leaving the chamber during the vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Commission is continuing to press for clarification after reports that Hungary has passed on internal EU…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137],"tags":[412,14489,14030,329,14029,14028,403],"class_list":{"0":"post-19413","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ursula-von-der-leyen","8":"tag-european-commission","9":"tag-european-union-flag","10":"tag-journalistic-reports","11":"tag-russia","12":"tag-russian-counterpart","13":"tag-sergei-lavrov","14":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116378838126873006","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}