Hungary’s ambassador to Warsaw is not welcome at Friday’s inauguration gala of the Polish presidency of the Council of the EU, a government minister said.
Formerly warm relations between Poland and Hungary have turned chilly in recent months, and are in the freezer after Hungary in December granted political asylum to fugitive Polish former Deputy Justice Minister Marcin Romanowski, prompting fury from the Polish side.
That has spilled over into the new year, as Poland takes the reins of the Council of the EU’s rotating presidency — which Hungary held in the latter half of 2024 — opening with a celebration at Warsaw’s Grand Theatre.
“We invited the entire diplomatic corps, but after the situation with Mr. Romanowski, [Foreign] Minister Sikorski sent a note to the Hungarian ambassador that he was not a welcome guest at the theater,” said Polish Deputy European Affairs Minister Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka.
She added that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was not invited either. “We are waiting to see if a lower-ranking representative will appear,” she said.
Romanowski, an MP with the nationalist opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, faces 11 charges in Poland for misuse of public funds when he was deputy justice minister from 2019 to 2023. A Warsaw court issued a European arrest warrant for him shortly before Hungary granted his asylum.
Relations between the two countries have become increasingly hostile since the current Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his centrist coalition defeated PiS in late 2023 — with the two governments taking different sides (Poland, pro Kyiv; Hungary, sympathetic to Moscow) over the European response to Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine.
According to Polish news outlet Onet, the Hungarian ambassador was invited to the gala and even confirmed his presence few weeks ago.
In response to the Polish decision, the Hungarian Foreign Affairs Ministry wrote in an email to POLITICO: “According to Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, two terms are competitive in connection with the decision of the Polish Foreign Minister’s colleague: pathetic and childish.”
Csongor Körömi contributed to this report.
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