Polish Foreign Minister's message to Orbán: “We would not allow Chinese policemen to patrol the streets of Warsaw”

“It is difficult to win friends if someone exudes selfishness”,

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said in response to a journalist's question about Hungary, criticising Viktor Orbán's anti-Western rhetoric on several points in an interview with Visegrad Insight. The Polish minister made the comment in the context of Hungary seeking the help of the European Union after Ukraine suspended Lukoil's oil deliveries towards Hungary.

According to the Polish Foreign Minister, it is not true that Orbán and Putin are currently leading the narrative of international communication. As he sees it, "in Western Europe, political elites’ consciousness is being de-Russified. No one talks about transformation through trade anymore." He also stressed that the West must show the so-called global south that colonialism was also practised by some white people against other white people, but the time of European colonialism is over and no one can support the restoration of the Russian empire.

On the subject of increasing the defence spending of NATO countries, the Polish Foreign Minister said that it might be needed to increase the spending to more than two per cent of the GDP, as this ratio was set for peacetime at the 2014 Newport summit. Poland plans to spend four per cent of its GDP on defence, and they are urging European consensus on this.

Sikorski also touched on the ongoing Hungarian EU Presidency and the suggestion of holding the next meeting of the Council of EU Foreign Ministers in August in Brussels instead of Budapest. He mentioned that it was him who suggested – as a compromise – that the meeting be held in Lviv or Mukachevo in western Ukraine. Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó initially welcomed the idea enthusiastically, but in the end he was the only one to veto the proposal, so the meeting will take place in the Belgian capital instead.

Continuing his line of thought, the Polish Foreign Minister said that he did not see how the balancing act between Moscow and Brussels, which he said irritated everyone else, would increase Hungary's leverage on the international stage. The Polish leadership would not allow Chinese police officers to patrol the streets of Warsaw, but Sikorski added that "everyone perceives their sovereignty as they see fit".