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GOVT NOT TO APPROVE EPF TRANCHE UNLESS OTP REMOVED FROM BLACKLIST

The government will not grant its approval to the next tranche of the European Peace Facility to Ukraine unless Hungary's OTP Bank is removed from Ukraine's list of war sponsors, the foreign minister said in Vienna on Wednesday.
 

For the same reason as well as because of restrictions concerning Chinese investments the government will not support any further sanctions against Russia, Péter Szijjártó said. Following a working lunch with Alexander Schallenberg, his Austrian counterpart, Szijjártó said “further, serious proposals have been tabled in Brussels, expecting European people to take further sacrifices while they would not bring peace a centimetre closer”, according to a statement by the foreign ministry. Szijjartó said the EU’s planned eleventh package of sanctions was “fully contrary to common sense”, and insisted that the previous ten had failed. He raised serious concern about the EU’s mulling measures against eight Chinese companies which could “certainly aggravate or even thwart” ties with China, and could “lead to a certain negative spiral of reactions”. Since we have “practically severed ties of cooperation between the EU and Russia one by one, we would consider it extremely harmful … if the same happened to Europe-China ties,” the minister said.