No surprises<\/p>\n
The five diplomats said they were unsurprised by the news, but that any formal response would depend on whether Orb\u00e1n is re-elected in April. Despite lagging behind Magyar\u2019s Tisza in the polls<\/a>, the Hungarian prime minister told POLITICO on Friday he could \u201ccertainly\u201d secure another term<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt undermines trust, cooperation, and the integrity of the European Union,\u201d said a second diplomat of the allegations. \u201cIt\u2019s a deplorable situation. If he stays after [the] election, I think the EU need to find ways to deal with this in another manner.\u201d<\/p>\n Another cautioned that whatever the EU and its leaders do, Orb\u00e1n will use it in his favor in the campaign. \u201cI don\u2019t think anybody is eager to do anything that would add oil to fire before April 12,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n Despite widespread agreement on the threat posed by Russia, a fourth diplomat pointed out that the content of discussions among leaders and foreign ministers are routinely reported in the press and frequently take place in an unrestricted format, meaning leaders don\u2019t leave their phones outside to minimize the risk of surveillance. But the optics of an EU government working so closely with a hostile state remains politically explosive.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that the Hungarian foreign minister, a close friend of [Russian Foreign Minister] Sergey Lavrov, has been reporting to the Russians practically minute by minute from every EU meeting is outright treason<\/a>,\u201d Magyar said at a campaign rally over the weekend. \u201cThis man has not only betrayed his own country, but Europe as well.\u201d<\/p>\n The allegations come as Orb\u00e1n\u2019s foreign supporters set course for Budapest to help him campaign in the final stretch of the elections. Polish President Karol Nawrocki \u2014 a political rival of Tusk\u2019s \u2014 will attend events on Monday, while U.S. Vice President JD Vance will jet in ahead of the vote next month.\u00a0<\/p>\n Orb\u00e1n refused to sign off on \u20ac90 billion in much-needed loans for Ukraine<\/a> at Friday\u2019s European Council, sparking a furious reaction from fellow leaders<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be surprising if this proves true,\u201d said a fifth EU diplomat of the allegations. \u201cHungary has long been [Russian President Vladimir] Putin\u2019s ally within the EU and continues to sabotage European security. The blocked \u20ac90 billion is simply the latest example of that pattern.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No surprises The five diplomats said they were unsurprised by the news, but that any formal response would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[677,678,64,362,354,679,419,680,455,681,366,126,368,682,683,127,423,371,444],"class_list":{"0":"post-683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-donald-tusk","8":"tag-cooperation","9":"tag-diplomacy","10":"tag-donald-tusk","11":"tag-elections","12":"tag-hungary","13":"tag-jd-vance","14":"tag-karol-nawrocki","15":"tag-kremlin","16":"tag-military","17":"tag-nato-summit","18":"tag-peter-magyar","19":"tag-russia","20":"tag-security","21":"tag-sergey-lavrov","22":"tag-surveillance","23":"tag-ukraine","24":"tag-united-states","25":"tag-viktor-orban","26":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}