Magyar meets Zelenskyy: first official talks meant to open a 'new chapter'
Hungary's prime minister meets Ukraine's president on Friday on the sidelines of the EU summit. Zelenskyy has been invited to Budapest for the anniversary of the 1956 uprising.
Archive image · Photo: Révész Gábor / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 (cropped and resized)
Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are holding their first official bilateral meeting in Brussels on Friday morning. Magyar said the brief talks in the Council building, which could last 10 to 15 minutes, should "open a new chapter" in relations. Under his predecessor Viktor Orbán, Budapest blocked Ukraine's EU accession progress for years over the rights of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia.
This week Ukraine passed a law strengthening the education rights of national minorities, and Zelenskyy signed it; Magyar called it a "historic breakthrough". The EU then opened two more negotiating clusters with Kyiv after Hungary dropped its objections. "We asked for guarantees, and it seems we have received them from the Ukrainians," Magyar said. At the same time he dampened expectations: he believes in genuine membership, "but that could take 15 or 20 years." Asked about a specific accession date, he said: "no such date exists."
According to Zelenskyy's deputy chief of staff Ihor Zhovkva, the Ukrainian president has been invited to Budapest on 23 October for the 70th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution; the visit has not yet been confirmed. "Our expectations are very positive," Zhovkva said. Magyar also floated a later meeting in Berehove, a Transcarpathian town with a large ethnic Hungarian population. On Friday, Zelenskyy is also scheduled to meet European Council President António Costa, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the prime ministers of Finland and Sweden in Brussels.