Hungary not invited to President Biden’s democracy summit
Two NATO Member Countries are not invited to the major democracy summit organised by American President Joe Biden. Hungary and Turkey are “dismantling” their democracies according to the US president.
Neither Hungary nor Turkey will attend next week’s Democracy Summit, which the United States is hosting at the end of March, Foreign Policy reports. According to Foreign Policy, the Biden administration invites around 120 countries to join its Summit for Democracy next week.
However, three U.S. officials confirmed that the lack of invitations for the two countries reflects mounting concerns about the degree of democratic backsliding in Turkey and Hungary.
Still an important ally in the NATO
At the same time, “Washington is relying on both countries to support the West’s strategy against Russia as the war in Ukraine rages on”. NATO needs Hungary’s and Turkey’s approval for Finland’s and Sweden’s bids to join NATO as full-fledged allies.
As we have previously written, Hungary started to use the Nordic expansion of NATO as a bargaining tactic in the Hungarian government’s debate the European Commission over the EU’s rule of law concerns and withheld funds.
Hungary wasn’t invited to the 2021 Democracy Summit either. As Telex pointed out, back then, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said that “we don’t need anyone to judge the state of Hungarian democracy as if it were a graduation exam”.
An administration official refutes this stand, saying that their goal is to establish a “counterweight” to the rising autocracies and develop relations between democratic countries.
“The United States is not interested in this event being seen as an all-encompassing judgment on the strength of another country’s democracy. That’s not the intention,” one senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told SitRep.
“When it comes to both Turkey and Hungary, we are committed to further strengthening our relations with both countries. They’re both important NATO allies, and we’re working together on many issues of mutual interest,” the official added.
In his recent state-of-the-nation address, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán outright called the Biden administration an “opponent” of the Hungarian governing party Fidesz.
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Source: Foreign Policy, telex.hu