Eurasia Press & News
Elsewhere, Poland continues to talk tough over preventing Ukrainian grain from flooding its market; radicalised Czech pensioners rise up, again; Slovak paediatricians to no longer take on shifts in children’s emergency rooms from next week.
Hungarian PM Viktor Orban did not make the international headlines with this year’s speech in Baile Tusnad in Romania, but he still managed to annoy neighbouring countries. This time Orban held back from using controversial expressions like the “illiberal state” (2014) or “mixed races” (2022), preferring to mainly speculate on the rise of China and how the rivalry between the US and China could affect the world and, in particular, Hungary. But away from the meat of the speech and in remarks afterwards, he managed to raise some eyebrows in countries which he might need in the future as potential allies.
Orban revealed that in advance he had received a “demarche” – a written note from the Romanian Foreign Ministry – requesting that he avoid certain topics in his speech, like national symbols, collective minority rights and “non-existent administrative areas” in Romania. “I have thought hard about what they could mean by that. I think they mean Transylvania and Szeklerland, but we have never claimed that these are Romanian administrative areas,” Orban said at the beginning of his speech. The Hungarian ambassador in Bucharest was summoned to the Foreign Ministry on Monday where it was explained this is not exactly the direction in which bilateral relations should be heading.
The country’s ambassador in Bratislava was also summoned. Acting Slovak PM Ludovit Odor, an ethnic Hungarian himself, called Orban’s remarks about Slovakia being a separated land of Hungary unacceptable, criticising his use of the terms “breakaway regions” and referring to Slovakia as “Felvidék”, which used to be the northern part of the Kingdom of Hungary and is home to some 450,000 ethnic Hungarians. “Czechoslovakia and later Slovakia or Hungary are equally successor states of Austria-Hungary. Nothing could have been broken away from the present-day Hungary,” the Slovak Foreign Ministry wrote, warning that casting doubt on the territorial integrity of the country would not be tolerated. In remarks after his speech, Orban also slammed the Hungarian minority in Slovakia for its failure to win seats in the Slovak parliament and help the Hungarian nation. Odor said such statements harm bilateral relations. Many other Slovak politicians also denounced Orban’s comments, including even Smer leader Robert Fico and Slovak National Party leader Andrej Danko, who have in the past expressed admiration for Orban’s way of doing politics. Conversely, Krisztian Forro, leader of Aliancia, a Hungarian minority party, promised Orban his party would win seats in the upcoming September election. This seems unlikely if opinion polls are to be believed. Although Slovak-Hungarian relations are significantly better than before 2010, this is not the first time in recent memory that Hungary has upset Slovakia.
Orban also had a pop at the Czechs, accusing the government there of having abandoned the V4 to join the ranks of EU “federalists”. Czech PM Petr Fiala retorted by underscoring that Czechia remains sovereign and that his government defends its national interests: “We decide for ourselves what we promote, support or want to change in the EU.” Interior Minister Vit Rakusan chimed in to claim that Czechia’s EU approach has “evolved”, adding the barb that Prague does not simply seek subsidies while avoiding scrutiny.
In news nearer to home, Hungary’s opposition parties garnered enough signatures to request the parliamentary speaker convene an extraordinary session for Monday, July 31. One of the six topics to be discussed would be ratification of Sweden’s NATO accession, which the governing Fidesz party has been delaying for a year. The speaker, arch-conservative Laszlo Kover, is obliged to convene the session, but most commentators predict Fidesz will simply boycott it; this would be the 17th time the opposition has convened a special session, but none were attended by Fidesz MPs. The chairman of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, Zsolt Nemeth, said earlier there is no urgency for ratification, despite Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s volte-face to support Sweden’s at the NATO Summit in Vilnius two weeks ago, as the Turkish parliament will only start debating the issue in the autumn. Hungary will hold its first regular parliamentary session in September.
Poland still feeling the Ukraine grain pain; waste disposal
Poland continues to talk tough over preventing Ukrainian grain and other produce from flooding its market, after Tuesday’s meeting of the EU Agriculture and Fisheries Council put off a request by Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia to extend trade curbs on Ukrainian grain imports. Those temporary restrictive measures, agreed in April and due to expire on September 15, have enabled Poland and other frontline states to “reduce pressure on local markets, while at the same time enabling the transit of Ukrainian goods to traditional markets in non-EU countries,” the five countries argued in a joint declaration urging an extension of the ban. Tuseday’s meeting discussed alternative solutions to the problem of getting Ukraine’s grain exports onto world markets after Russia’s decision last week to stop their passage via the Black Sea, such as increasing the number of “EU solidarity lanes” – which currently carry about 60 per cent of Ukraine’s grain exports across Europe and onto world markets in Africa and Asia – and subsidising the transit transport costs in those frontline states so it becomes more profitable to get the Ukrainian produce out. Yet Robert Telus, Poland’s agriculture minister, said after the meeting that he hoped the September 15 ban would be extended and Poland won’t have to resort to the kind of unilateral solutions mentioned earlier by PM Mateusz Morawiecki. On July 19, Morawiecki said Poland will not open its borders to Ukrainian grain even if the EU does not agree to extend the ban. “The interests of our farmers are paramount,” Telus added, acknowledging the importance of rural constituencies in October’s general election.
Meanwhile, Poland is on a collision course with Germany over what it considers the illegal dumping of waste on its territory by German companies. On Wednesday, Climate and Environment Minister Anna Moskwa said her government has filed a complaint with the European Commission against Berlin for allegedly failing to remove 35 tonnes of waste illegally moved to Poland and stored at seven sites, despite repeated requests to German federal and regional authorities that went unanswered. Hazardous waste is becoming an election issue after a fire broke out on July 22 at a chemical waste storage site in the city of Zielona Gora. According to AP, Polish companies sign contracts with foreign firms to neutralise the waste, but in some cases just dump it at unauthorized sites, eventually burning it to make room for more. These toxic fires are a growing area of public concern.
Are Poles satisfied with their lot? Not according to a survey published this week. The survey, conducted by by IRCenter for Newseria agency on a group of 1,000 Poles above 16 years old, found that only 37 per cent declared their satisfaction with their lives, while 22 per cent indicated they are dissatisfied. “Generally, Poles are moderately satisfied with their lives, as only one-third… declare that they are satisfied. On the other hand, only 22 per cent are dissatisfied, so the largest group is those who are in the middle,” Janusz Sielicki, partner at IRCenter, told the Warsaw Business Journal. Women are more frequently dissatisfied with their lives – 26 per cent compared with 18 per cent of men.
Radicalised Czech retirees are revolting; Slovak paediatricians to strike
A mob of radicalised Czech pensioners met the riot police again this week as they sought to disrupt the trial of a disinformation activist accused of harassing medical staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. The heavy-duty cops were called to a Prague courthouse to deal with an unruly gang of middle- and old-aged demonstrators attempting to halt a hearing against Patrik Tusl, who’s already serving a prison sentence for inciting violence against Ukrainian refugees. Authorities have noted increased radicalisation among geriatric “patriots” amid the pandemic and war in Ukraine, and have beefed up security as these groups have shown a willingness to employ violence – even if it is of the jostling variety. Similar scenes accompanied Tusl’s last appearance up before the beak in June. Experts warn that while media literacy efforts tend to focus on younger age groups, the Czech disinformation scene is mostly concentrated among older generations. This is helping to stoke the rise of groups influenced by the US “sovereign citizens” movement and an ongoing series of anti-government protests led by radical opposition groups and featuring pro-Russian narratives.
In Slovakia, some of the paediatricians who announced in early July that they would refuse to work in urgent care centres will no longer take on shifts at these facilities starting from next week. More than 400 of the country’s 980 paediatricians have decided to quit children’s emergency rooms, many having already reached retirement age, but some can only leave after the summer. These paediatricians will continue to provide care in their doctors’ offices, but not in the late afternoon and evening hours. The Health Ministry has promised to shorten paediatricians’ working hours at urgent care centres by two hours. Doctors would thus finish at 8:00 pm. The ministry also wants to increase payments for the provision of urgent care in these centres and reduce the number of urgent care centres. The former of the mentioned measures can only be changed in parliament, yet MPs are on holiday.
