German and French ambassadors upset over Balázs Orbán's remarks, sent a démarche to Foreign Ministry about it

German Ambassador Julia Gross and French Ambassador Jonathan Lacôte drafted a so-called démarche, a verbal diplomatic note in response to the recent statements of Balázs Orbán, which have caused a great outrage, Szabad Európa reports.

According to the newspaper, the démarche states that if this is indeed the position held by Hungary, a NATO member state on the issue of common defence, it is contrary to the spirit of the military alliance and is an insult to the other members.

Speaking in a video interview to Mandiner last week, Balázs Orbán, the political director of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that “Based precisely on '56, we probably would not have done what President Zelensky did 2.5 years ago, because it is irresponsible, because one can see that he took his country into a war of defense." The Prime Minister seems to have settled the matter by calling Balázs Orbán's remarks a mistake, but added that he has no doubt that his political director would "fight alongside us at Corvin köz". (the location of a legendary battle between Hungarian revolutionaries and the Soviet forces sent to crush the Hungarian revolution in 1956 – TN) Viktor Orbán was much less forgiving in the case of former president Katalin Novák's clemency scandal earlier this year.

The paper reminds that a démarche is the mildest way for one country to signal to another that it has taken an unacceptable step. It is an oral message, precisely because the sending party does not consider the situation serious enough to warrant a written record, but it is considered unusual among allied countries.

According to Szabad Európa, the verbal protest was figuratively "delivered" by a diplomat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, but the person was not received at the level that protocol would have dictated.

The paper adds that the way Julia Gross spoke at a large reception held on Wednesday evening at Budapest's Vigadó in honour of the Day of German Unity was also highly unusual in terms of diplomatic protocol. The German ambassador said that the Hungarian government had strayed from the path of friendship between the two nations and that the delay in approving Sweden's accession to NATO was a farce.