{"id":448398,"date":"2026-03-23T14:49:02","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T13:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/03\/23\/lungheria-sotto-accusa-avrebbe-condiviso-informazioni-riservate-dellue-con-la-russia\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T15:48:40","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T14:48:40","slug":"hungary-under-fire-for-allegedly-sharing-confidential-eu-information-with-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/03\/23\/hungary-under-fire-for-allegedly-sharing-confidential-eu-information-with-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Hungary under fire for allegedly sharing confidential EU information with Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels \u2013 For years, Russia<\/strong> reportedly received detailed reports <\/strong>on key meetings between European Union foreign ministers. And the country “spying” is said to be the very one that has for years been the subject of doubts and fears about excessive alignment with the Kremlin: Hungary under Viktor Orb\u00e1n<\/strong>, the country\u2019s prime minister since 2010. The news started to spread on Saturday (21 March), when the US daily,  Washington Post<\/em><\/a> reported the suspicions of several EU security officials, according to whom “during breaks in EU Council meetings, the Hungarian government\u2019s foreign minister, Peter<\/strong> Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3,<\/b> is said to have made regular phone calls <\/strong>to his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov<\/strong>, with \u201clive reports on what\u2019s been discussed.\u201d According to one of the officials interviewed, “through such calls, every single EU meeting for years has basically had Moscow behind the table.<\/strong>” While the EU Council limited itself to a “no comment” on the matter, the European Commission<\/strong> \u2013 when questioned today (23 March) on the matter \u2013 did not deny the US newspaper\u2019s reports and, through its spokesperson Arianna Podest\u00e0, described the news as \u201ca cause for great concern,<\/strong>\u201d calling on Budapest to \u201cprovide clarification.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

The Hungarian government\u2019s ties \u2013 and in particular those of Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 \u2013 with the Kremlin are well known. Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the foreign minister and Orb\u00e1n\u2019s right-hand man has travelled to Moscow 16 times<\/strong>, most recently on 4 March<\/strong>, when he met directly with President Vladimir Putin<\/strong>. The news itself regarding the transmission of sensitive information over the phone was met with little surprise by some prominent figures within the EU. Yesterday (22 March), the Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk<\/strong>, wrote <\/span><\/b>su X<\/a><\/span><\/b> that what the Washington Post revealed \u201cshouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. We\u2019ve had our suspicions about that for a long time<\/strong>. That\u2019s one reason why I take the floor only when strictly necessary and say just as much as necessary.\u201d He was echoed by Gabrielius Landsbergis<\/strong>, Lithuania\u2019s Foreign Minister from 2020 to 2024, who said he had been warned of the existence of a privileged channel between Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 and Lavrov as early as the beginning of 2024. \u201cThat is why my counterparts and I limited the sharing of sensitive information when Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 was present,\u201d he added, specifically recalling the attempt to \u201ckeep the Hungarian delegates at a distance<\/strong>\u201d during the NATO summit held in Vilnius in 2023. According to some EU officials interviewed by <\/span><\/b>Politico<\/em><\/a><\/span><\/b>, this was so widely known in the corridors of Brussels that the very aura of suspicion surrounding Hungary was said to be one of the main reasons why it was recently decided to \u201cconduct most diplomatic talks between EU states in smaller formats<\/strong>, such as the E3<\/strong> (Germany, France, the UK), the E4<\/strong> (France, Germany, the UK, and Poland) or the Weimar Alliance<\/strong> (Germany, France, and Poland).” <\/span><\/p>\n

Budapest\u2019s defence strategy is to shift the focus to the fact that Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3\u2019s telephone conversations were allegedly intercepted by foreign intelligence services<\/strong>. \u201cThe interception of a government minister\u2019s conversations is a serious attack on Hungary, which is why I have instructed the Minister of Justice to launch a thorough investigation immediately,\u201d wrote <\/span><\/b>su X<\/a><\/span><\/b> Orb\u00e1n\u2019s government spokesperson, Zolt\u00e1n Kov\u00e1cs<\/strong>. The Minister for European Affairs, J\u00e1nos B\u00f3ka<\/strong>, went further, directly dismissing the allegations as “fake news<\/strong> spread as a desperate reaction to the momentum gained by Fidesz (Orb\u00e1n\u2019s party, ed.) in the election campaign.” <\/span><\/p>\n

The scandal, in fact, has erupted at a very delicate time for Hungary: parliamentary elections are due to be held on 12 April and \u2013 for the first time in 15 years \u2013 Orb\u00e1n will be standing for election <\/span><\/b>with the polls suggesting he is the underdog<\/a><\/span><\/b>. As expected, the leader of the Respect and Freedom Party and his main rival, P\u00e9ter Magyar<\/strong>, immediately seized the opportunity presented by the “Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 affair.” At a rally held over the weekend, Magyar described the Foreign Minister\u2019s behaviour as \u201ca true case of betrayal of the motherland<\/strong>,\u201d adding that \u201cthis man has betrayed not only Hungary, but the whole of Europe.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

In an election campaign already quite heated, new revelations in the same Washington Post report could further heighten tensions. According to the US newspaper, Russian intelligence<\/strong> (SVR) is said to have proposed a plan to the Budapest government to strengthen Orb\u00e1n\u2019s position in the final days before the vote. Among the strategies contained in the plan, known as The Gamechanger<\/strong>, is reportedly the staging of an assassination attempt against the prime minister<\/strong>. \u201cSuch an incident will shift the perception of <\/b>the campaign out of the rational realm of socioeconomic questions into an emotional one, where the key themes will become state security and the stability and defense of the political system,\u201d reads the document published by the Washington Post.<\/p>\n

On this point too, the Orb\u00e1n government has declined to comment when asked by the American newspaper.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to EU sources cited by the Washington Post, the Hungarian Foreign Minister, Peter Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3, is at the centre of the affair: he allegedly made \u201cregular phone calls\u201d to his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, to update him on information exchanged during meetings with other EU foreign ministers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7899,"featured_media":378266,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25707],"tags":[25833,25871,25815,26458,27072,33485,27782,28580,25803,33486,30669],"class_list":["post-448398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-politics","tag-council-ue-en","tag-informazioni-riservate","tag-peter-hungarian","tag-peter-szijjarto-and","tag-russia-in-2","tag-sergej-lavrov","tag-viktor-orban-en-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7899"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":448399,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448398\/revisions\/448399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}