Assessing the Bucharest-9 summit she attended on Friday, President Katalin Novák said that the declaration adopted in the Romanian capital "clearly and unequivocally reflects the position I expressed in my inaugural speech a month ago".
“We have a successful B9 meeting behind us,” President Novák said in an English-language post on Facebook. Making reference to the statement she made at her inauguration, the president said: “We strongly condemn Russia’s unjustified aggression against Ukraine which has ruined Europe’s peace, causing enormous human suffering and destruction.” “We mourn the tragic human sacrifices. We have reaffirmed our commitment to the sovereignty and the democratic processes of Ukraine. This also means that fully guaranteeing the rights of the Hungarian minority in Subcarpathia is the obligation of the Ukrainian state at all times,” President Novák said. She said because of the war in Ukraine the security of food supplies “may be endangered in those areas where living conditions are still difficult”. “So we can expect a further increase in migration,” she said.
President Novák noted the swift progress made in the development of Hungary’s armed forces. “By 2024, we will clear an old backlog and the defense budget will reach 2 percent of the GDP,” the Hungarian president said. She added that striving for security and peace was a top priority. President Novák noted her invitation by Romanian and Polish counterparts, Klaus Iohannis and Andrzej Duda, and recalled that the B-9 comprised the four Visegrad Group countries, the three Baltic states, plus Romania and Bulgaria, striving for the unified representation of NATO members in the region. The president said the summit was about “finding common answers to the challenges of war in our neighborhood”.