The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary, Peter Szijjarto, said that the North Atlantic Alliance is convening a meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Commission at the ministerial level, which Budapest has blocked for the past six years.

 He stated this in Brussels after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, writes the Hungarian publication Infostart.

 Sijarto said that at their bilateral meeting on Tuesday, Stoltenberg announced the convening of the commission as part of the meeting of NATO foreign ministers on April 4-5.

 "The NATO Secretary General announced that, for various reasons, he is convening this meeting during the meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of NATO on April 4-5, despite the opposition of Hungary and the fact that, according to the Hungarian side, it can only happen under the condition of unanimous will." - said Sijarto.

 "This violates the unity of NATO and the unanimity procedure. At the same time, we cannot do anything else, we take note of the Secretary General's decision," he added.

 Szijjarto noted that Stoltenberg paid attention at the meeting to issues related to the protection of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine, due to which Budapest has been blocking meetings of the commission at the ministerial level for several years.

At the same time, he stated that Hungary will not support any significant integration step of Ukraine into NATO or the EU "until the rights of the Hungarian national community are restored there in accordance with the conditions of 2015 and earlier."

 According to EuroPravda, the possibility of a meeting of the Commission at the ministerial level is indeed being worked out, but there is no final decision yet. If held, it will be the first meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Commission since 2017, when an education law opposed by Budapest was adopted.

 Previously, in order to circumvent the Hungarian veto, NATO held joint meetings with Ukraine and Georgia. Currently, it is about holding the Ukraine-NATO Ministerial Commission.

 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, in response to the question of "European Pravda", informed that they could not yet confirm the information about the convening of the Commission.

 The Alliance's website currently announces a ministerial meeting on April 4-5 in Brussels, but there is no mention of the Ukraine-NATO Commission yet.

 It will be recalled that at the end of February, Szijarto said that Budapest would unblock the meetings of the Ukraine-NATO Committee at the ministerial level, if Kyiv fulfills the demand regarding the rights of Hungarian minorities.

 The Hungarian side has previously used the topic of alleged restrictions on the rights of Hungarians. In particular, Szijarto said in an interview last year: if Ukraine does not change its policy towards the Hungarian minority, it will greatly limit the Hungarian government's ability to provide any support to Kyiv in the conflict with the Russian Federation.

 At the time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called Sijarto's statements "far-fetched and politicized."