Hungarian FM tells RT: Europe must ‘keep Christian heritage,’ sanctions on Budapest will fail

21 Sep, 2018 16:29 / Updated 5 years ago

Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto doesn’t see the EU succeeding in imposing sanctions against Budapest and is advocating for strong member states in a union which keeps “its Christian heritage,” RT has learned.

Szijjarto spoke to Sophie Shevardnadze’s ‘SophieCo’ program a week after the majority of MEPs voted to trigger Article 7 against Hungary – a clause that could see sanctions imposed against Budapest.

Calling the vote a “decision made by cheating,” Szijjarto believes that any “political intention” to impose EU sanctions against Hungary would be “unsuccessful” as it requires the unanimous backing of all member states.

“Poland has already expressed that they would veto all kinds of decisions like that,” Szijjarto explained, referring to the separate Article 7 procedure filed against Warsaw. “The prime minister of the Czech Republic made it very clear that he’s standing behind our prime minister,” he added.

However, while the difference in opinion between anti-migration and pro-migration factions in the EU isn’t going away anytime soon, Szijjarto doesn’t see that resulting in Hungary leaving the bloc, insisting: “Our interest is to have a strong European Union.”

“We don’t want to give up our nationality, our culture and our heritage and so on and so forth. So there’s a big clash between those who want to see the European Union as post-Christian and post-national and us who want to see Europe as a Christian continent based on strong member states.”

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