Ukrainian Foreign Minister Calls the Transcarpathian Community’s Situation an “Artificial Problem”

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha

At a press conference following the EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Brussels on Monday, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said it was absolutely unacceptable that his Ukrainian counterpart, Andrii Sybiha who had joined part of the talks online, had described the issue of the Hungarian national community in Transcarpathia as an “artificial problem.”

He called it scandalous that “some EU member states have lined up behind the Ukrainian foreign minister’s position, and some foreign ministers have even gone so far as to question whether we Hungarians, the Hungarian government, have the right to judge the situation of the Hungarian community in Transcarpathia at all.”

Brussels wants to sacrifice the Hungarian community in Transcarpathia and their rights, just so that Ukraine can be admitted to the European Union at lightning speed, without any of the conditions that one would normally expect. We reject this in the strongest possible terms.”

he stressed.

Hungary will not accept the sacrifice of the rights of Transcarpathian Hungarians for Ukraine’s fast-track EU accession. It is outrageous that @andrii_sybiha called their rights an “artificial problem” today. pic.twitter.com/D9GSVu4mhj

— Péter Szijjártó (@FM_Szijjarto) March 17, 2025

“We also reject the idea that anyone should take away Hungary’s right to stand up for Hungarian national communities, and we do not accept that anyone should take away our right to judge the legal position of our national communities,” the minister pointed out.

Mr. Szijjártó also noted that his German and Austrian counterparts had together tried to lecture him on how well Kyiv had done in this respect recently, and how the rights of the Hungarian minority were respected in the country.

On the contrary, the truth and reality is that Ukraine has been systematically violating the rights of the Hungarian community in Transcarpathia for ten years,”

he said. “As long as there is a national government in Hungary, of course we will continue to stand up for the restoration of the rights of the Transcarpathian Hungarians in the strongest possible terms,” he added.

“For more than ten years we have been receiving fine words and touching statements from Ukraine, but then they have not been followed by any meaningful action,” he recalled. The minister stressed that there can be no progress in the accession negotiations with Ukraine until the rights of the Hungarian national community are fully restored. “And whether Ukraine will become a member of the European Union will be decided by the Hungarian people in a referendum that will take place soon in Hungary,” he said.

“In the European Union, and of course in NATO, it takes a unanimous decision of the members to admit someone. And it would be good if everyone understood clearly that it is not Hungary that wants to join integrations of which Ukraine is already a member, but the other way round,” he pointed out.

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