“The series of attempted denunciations of Hungary by your newspaper presents opinion so determined in its criticism that it loses sight of plain facts”, Government Spokesperson Zoltán Kovács wrote in a reader’s letter published in Friday’s edition of the British business daily.
Mr. Kovács pointed out that in the paper’s latest editorial it recommended that Brussels should suspend cohesion funds to Hungary for violating the rule of law and blatantly rejecting the EU’s rules and values.
“Last week, the newspaper denied the existence of a Soros plan to have the EU admit 1 million migrants a year”, he highlighted.
According to the author of the article, Gideon Rachman, this is a “fabricated scare story”, Mr. Kovács added.
“The paper is ignoring the facts that George Soros himself published his plan with those very proposals, he meets regularly with members of the European Commission, and the Commission continues to develop a migrant resettlement quota scheme to distribute migrants among member states”, the Government Spokesperson writes.
“The government of Viktor Orbán opposes illegal immigration, with broad, popular support, and that’s why we oppose Mr Soros’s efforts to push that agenda”, he emphasised.
“Despite the paper’s claim, that is not a violation of the rule of law”, Mr. Kovács declared.
According to the Government Spokesperson, the argument of the British daily wobbles on several other points as well. “Contrary to the Financial Times’s assertions, criticism of Mr. Soros does not constitute anti-Semitism, as the Israeli Ambassador to Hungary also said recently”, he explained.
“Hungary has not launched a ‘legal assault’ on the Central European University, nor is it vilifying non-governmental organisations, but is simply requiring them to be more transparent”, Mr. Kovács declared.
“A European Parliament delegation that left Hungary just last week found nothing out of the ordinary in several EU-funded projects it inspected. Besides, cutting off cohesion funds is a bad idea because, as EU Commissioner Günther Oettinger also pointed out recently, European industry is a ‘net recipient’ in that deal”, he also highlighted.
“Hungary has demonstrated solidarity with our European allies by protecting our common border, upholding our treaty obligations out of respect for the rule of law in the spirit of European values”, the Government Spokesperson underlined.