EU foreign ministers' informal summit to be held in Brussels instead of Budapest in August, Borrell announces

The informal summit of EU foreign and defence ministers will be held in Brussels instead of Budapest at the end of August, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell announced at a press conference in Brussels on Monday following the regular monthly meeting of foreign ministers.

He said the decision was a symbolic signal in response to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's trip to Moscow earlier this month which took place without prior coordination with his EU partners, where he held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the situation in Ukraine.

Borrell further added:

“Each member state is sovereign on its foreign policy – true. But as far as they are members of this club, they have to obey the treaties,” and Viktor Orbán has not done so.

Speaking during a break in the meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council on Monday, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said that a "massive, concerted" attack, "often based on lies", has been launched against Viktor Orbán's "peace mission". The Hungarian minister said that they were facing "an aggressive, pro-war hysteria and attacks on the Hungarian government's peace policy, as well as attempts to discredit it at any cost."

As we reported earlier, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell had called for a closed session to discuss "all that has happened in the last few weeks", starting with Viktor Orbán's trips to Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing to Szijjártó's speech at the UN, where he accused the EU of encouraging war.

Informal council meetings are usually held in the country holding the rotating presidency, which is currently Hungary. But ministers from several member states have recently said that they would boycott them or are considering doing so. Sweden, Finland, Poland and the three Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Germany and Denmark had previously all announced they would skip informal meetings during Hungary's six-month presidency.

(MTI,Euronews)