The Croatian president condemned the EU’s sanctions against Hungary
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) – Croatia’s president said Friday that the European Union’s efforts to uphold democratic standards in its member states threatens the bloc’s collapse and condemned EU efforts to financially punish Hungary for its alleged violations of rule of law standards.
President Zoran Milanović stated this at a press conference in the capital of Hungary, Budapest, after a conversation with his Hungarian counterpart, Katalin Novák. Milanović repeated Hungary’s frequent criticism of the EU, saying that the Union overreaches in its powers over member states and that this excessive control hastened Brexit and pushed the United Kingdom out.
The EU should not become, he said, a “United States of Europe,” adding that EU actions against Hungary — which has frozen billions of euros in funding to Budapest over concerns about corruption and the rule of law — threaten to destroy the 27-member bloc.
“This kind of approach (between the EU and Hungary) is deeply irritating,” he said, warning that “today it is Hungary, tomorrow it will be some bigger country that will need to ‘learn a lesson’.”
Milanović won the presidential elections in Croatia at the end of 2019 as a liberal and left-leaning candidate, a counterpoint to the conservative government currently in power in the newest member of the EU. But since then he has turned to populist nationalism and criticized Western policy towards the Balkans and Russia.
Milanović thus gained the reputation of a pro-Russian landmark, which he denied. However, in recent months he openly opposed the admission of Finland and Sweden to NATO in the middle of the war in Ukraine, and the training of Ukrainian troops in Croatia as part of the EU’s aid to that endangered country.
And while the heads of state said that they both condemn Russian aggression against Ukraine and support its territorial integrity, Milanović said that he, like the Hungarian government, does not support sanctions against Moscow, and characterized the conflict in Ukraine as a proxy war between Russia and the United States. States.
“The question is how much damage (sanctions) will bring us. This causes damage to Europe,” Milanović said. “We managed to bring Russia and China closer together. In whose interest is it? I will have to answer all these questions, especially those who make these decisions on my behalf. I demand an answer.”
Novák said at a press conference on Friday that she welcomes Croatia’s entry into the Schengen area of 27 countries, a borderless travel zone in Europe, on January 1.
Croatia’s entry into the zone subsequently removed the border fence separating Hungary and Croatia, a change that Novák said would increase tourism and ease travel between neighboring countries and move the EU’s external borders further south.
Novák also called on Ukrainian authorities to respect the rights of the Hungarian ethnic minority in Ukraine’s western Transcarpathia region, where she said Hungarian flags had recently been removed from public institutions in what she called a restriction on minority rights.
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Jovana Gec contributed to this report from Belgrade, Serbia.