At the request of the Hungarian Prime Minister, the Europeans withdrew the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill, from the list of sanctioned personalities.
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After the meeting of European Heads of State and Government in Brussels on Monday 30 and Tuesday, May 31, the twenty-seven thought they had found a compromise on the sixth pack of sanctions against Moscow. It was without counting with Viktor Orban, the Hungarian Prime Minister, who, Wednesday 1 er June, issued a new claim and obtained a last concession: Thursday, the Europeans resolved To be removed from the list of personalities sanctioned the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill, which unambiguously supports the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
it is an understatement to say that, in this sequence, Budapest has not respected the grammar of community affairs: if the negotiations carried out during a European council can be difficult, a political agreement, once sealed, does not get rid of . Budapest had certainly mentioned the case of Patriarch Kirill before the meeting, but at no time, Mr. Orban, known for his proximity to Vladimir Putin, then told his counterparts, preferring to focus on energy issues, highly complexes.
On this point, the twenty-seven agreed to temporarily exclude Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria from their decision of an embargo on Russian oil, thus taking into account the specificities of these countries and of their heavy dependence on Russian black gold. For the rest – restrictive measures on banks, television channels and new oligarchs and close to the Kremlin -, the last adjustments had been arrested before the European Council and the file was enclosed. At least, that’s what we thought of Brussels.
“We all deplore this decision to withdraw Kirill from the list of sanctioned. But we were not going to sacrifice a pack of substantial sanctions on the altar of the Orthodox patriarch”, comments a diplomat. Why did Viktor Orban want to save the Russian religious so much? “This would affect the religious freedom of the communities in Hungary, which is sacrosanct,” he explained during a radio interview on May 6, after having received a letter from the Hungarian Orthodox community asking him to do everything to oppose it “. A community which represents only 0.1 % of the Hungarian population, according to the last census of 2011. But Mr. Orban, himself a little practicing Calvinist, has been strong since the refugee crisis of 2015 to defend Christian identity in Europe. He also shares with the Russian Church an obsession with the LGBT community.
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