Author: Kathryn Carlson

The boycotts of Friday’s EU finance minister meeting in Budapest have only made the country stronger, Hungary’s finance minister Mihály Varga said. Speaking in Budapest after the meeting, Varga said the “long list of our participants” for Friday’s meeting show that “the newest sanctions incentive of Brussels has, in this case, worked in the benefit of the Hungarian presidency.” Hungary currently holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, during which time Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has undertaken self-declared “peace missions” to Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing and Washington and claimed — without authorization — to be representing the European Union,…