US may impose sanctions on influential Hungarian individuals

Citing several independent diplomatic sources, the Hungarian news site 444 reports that the United States may be planning new measures to punish the Hungarian government. The paper's sources also suggest that, as with the 2014 expulsions, the US could impose sanctions on influential individuals.

David Pressman, the US Ambassador in Budapest, has called for a press conference on Wednesday afternoon. He did not officially name any topic for the event, but 444, citing sources, says he may even announce sanctions.

The escalation in diplomatic relations between the Hungarian and US governments is also evident from the way Pressman and Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó have clashed several times recently. David Pressman, for example, sharply criticized the Hungarian government as early as the beginning of February because, in his view, "Hungarian government politicians often talk about promoting peace, but from condemning sanctions to accepting Russian 'ceasefire' proposals, they continue to express views supported by Putin. "We join the Hungarian government's call for peace, but these calls should be addressed to Vladimir Putin."

Shortly afterwards, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó reacted to this, saying that what Pressman thinks is completely irrelevant. And after Viktor Orbán Viktor's photo with Donald Trump on 3 April, Pressman posted a picture of the two politicians with the following text "Péter Szijjártó, Hungary's Foreign Minister, said a few weeks ago: 'We show our respect by not interfering in the internal politics of other countries, by not expressing our opinions or trying to influence them.'" But later, at last Thursday's Cabinet briefing, the remark by Gergely Gulyás, the Minister in charge of the Prime Minister's Office, was also telling when he said that Viktor Orbán's making a pun out of US Ambassador Pressman's name, calling him a "man exerting pressure" was not in itself hostility.

Last year, the US denounced the 1979 treaty with Hungary on the avoidance of double taxation. Szijjártó said earlier that the US had acted in response to the Hungarian government's failure to give its consent to the introduction of a global minimum tax. Since then, the Hungarian government has also discussed the matter with the OECD: however, at the beginning of April, Washington indicated to the Hungarian government that they were not yet ready to reopen the related negotiations.