However, according to Hungarian and Polish government sources with detailed information about Katalin Novak’s visit, at least one of her meetings was extremely tense and went very badly for her.<\/p>\n
While the Hungarian president and her staff could have hoped that Nov\u00e1k would disarm her Polish counterparts with friendly gestures and her personal charm, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was more interested in concrete political-economic issues. According to information obtained by Direkt36, this surprised Nov\u00e1k and her entourage.<\/p>\n
For example, Morawiecki asked the Hungarian head of state to explain why Hungary’s dependence on Russian energy is so severe. Nov\u00e1k responded with the Orb\u00e1n government’s usual argument that this is an unfortunate heritage of the past and that it is technically impossible to replace Russian energy sources. The Polish PM, however, knew well in advance what her response would be and immediately came up with counter-arguments.<\/p>\n
In preparation for the meeting, Morawiecki asked his own staff and experts working for the Polish government for detailed calculations on Hungary’s dependence on Russian energy and whether it is possible to replace Russian energy sources.<\/p>\n
“The Polish analyses all came to the conclusion that Hungary could technically replace Russian energy, it just doesn’t want to,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
explained a source familiar with the details of the meeting.<\/p>\n
The Poles, for example, checked\u2014and found disputable\u2014claims of the Hungarian government and MOL, Hungary\u2019s state-affiliated oil company, about the exact time it would take to switch oil refineries from Urals-type Russian oil to other types of oil. The Hungarian argument was that it would take between two and four years and hundreds of millions of dollars. But the Polish PM’s experts concluded that this could be achieved in a much shorter time than the Hungarian claims. Morawiecki also confronted Nov\u00e1k with the fact that, even if the Russians shut down the Friendship (Druzhba) pipeline, Hungary would not collapse, because Hungary could replace the lost oil through the Adriatic pipeline from Croatia.<\/p>\n
The Polish prime minister and his staff prepared in advance on the topic of natural gas, too. Morawiecki lectured his guest on the various interconnectors and alternative gas routes that, according to his experts, could help Hungary to gradually wean itself off Russian gas if it wanted to. He also mentioned that the Hungarian government signed a long-term gas contract with Russia’s Gazprom in the autumn of 2021, which also did not point in the direction of reducing Russian energy dependency.<\/p>\n
At this point, Nov\u00e1k tried to dodge further questions in the debate. Emphasizing that she was still new to her position, she deferred the questions to one of her aides, Kristof Altusz, the diplomatic director of the Hungarian President\u2019s Office. However, Polish government sources said that his answers did not convince Morawiecki and his staff either.<\/p>\n
Katalin Nov\u00e1k’s unsuccessful debut in Warsaw was typical of the last year or so, during which politicians from the Polish right-wing governing coalition led by the Law and Justice (PiS) party have started to confront the Orb\u00e1n government, sometimes behind closed doors and sometimes in public.<\/p>\n
Direkt36 and VSquare have, in recent months, talked to more than 30 sources, including Hungarian and Polish government officials, who are closely following the development of relations between the two countries. The picture that emerged is one in which Poles have not completely severed ties with the Orb\u00e1n government but have seriously cut them back.<\/p>\n
Among other things, it has emerged that Polish government circles have a particularly bad opinion of Hungarian foreign minister P\u00e9ter Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3, whose staff has even upset an influential Polish pro-government media tycoon. And although Hungarian diplomacy is making serious efforts to court Polish leadership, reactions to these attempts were rather cold in recent months. This also hampers Orb\u00e1n’s ambitious plans for creating a new European political alliance.<\/p>\n
Hungary\u2019s government did not reply to our request for comment. Katalin Nov\u00e1k’s office responded that they always follow “the written and unwritten rules of diplomacy,\u201d and thus “the non-public part of the negotiations is not disclosed\u201d by her office. The Polish prime minister’s office did not provide any substantive answers to our questions, and only said that details of Morawiecki’s official visits are published on their website.<\/p>\n
I. WRATH IN WARSAW<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n
Protest outside the Hungarian Embassy in Warsaw in November 2022. Source: Euromaidan-Warszawa \/ Facebook<\/p><\/div>\n
In the spring of 2022, a parcel arrived at the Hungarian Embassy in Warsaw, the likes of which had never been seen before by members of the diplomatic mission, which had until then enjoyed respect (or, at worst, neutrality) in Polish public life. They received a box with a strong smell, so when the embassy secretariat opened the package, the contents were not as surprising as they might have been: the box was full of excrement (one source describing the incident said it was not clear whether it was animal or human excrement, as no such analysis was carried out by embassy staff).<\/p>\n
This episode was far from the only extreme manifestation of Polish anger against the Hungarian government. According to a source familiar with the events, there was a mass of abusive comments on the Facebook page of the Hungarian Embassy in Warsaw, and even death threats, which were reported to the embassy’s security department, which in turn informed the Polish police. “We’ll cut your guts out, you Russian hirelings!,” read similar messages that were received in droves in the spring of 2022, according to the source.<\/p>\n
On March 30, 2022, activists protesting against the pro-Russian policies of the Orb\u00e1n government poured red paint on the embassy, and on May 25 of that same year, protesters climbed the embassy’s railing and hung protest banners depicting Orb\u00e1n and Putin toasting with glasses filled with oil on it. The second case was investigated for alleged trespassing, but the police closed both cases quickly and did not find the perpetrators. Some protests were organized by local Ukrainians, others by Polish civilians, and others by Greenpeace.<\/p>\n
In one protest, an effigy of Viktor Orban dangling from Vladimir Putin’s buttocks was displayed. During another rally, protesters placed children’s shoes in front of the Hungarian Embassy in Warsaw, referring to the mass killing of Ukrainian children.<\/p>\n
The protests were not only in Warsaw, but also at the Hungarian consulate in Krakow. According to a source who followed the events closely, one of the main organizers of the demonstration in Krakow was a former classmate – a Hungarian citizen – of one of the local Hungarian consuls. “This story shows what this has come to and how it has come down on a personal human level,” the source said, adding that Hungarian diplomats in Poland are overwhelmingly either of Polish origin or have other strong family ties to the country.<\/p>\n
“To experience that it is a shame to be a Hungarian diplomat in Poland was simply shocking,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
the source added.<\/p>\n
The protest actions targeted not only Hungarian diplomacy in Poland, but simply everything Hungarian. In spring 2022, some Polish travel agencies canceled their trips to Hungary, and a few Polish companies and shops announced a boycott of Hungarian products, including Hungarian wine, in addition to Russian and Belarusian products.<\/p>\n
According to a source working in the Hungarian-Polish cultural scene, the father of Hungarian Ambassador to Warsaw Orsolya Kov\u00e1cs, Istv\u00e1n Kov\u00e1cs, a renowned expert of Polish history and culture, feared he would be booed and canceled his participation in the 2022 World Congress of Polish Literature Translators in Krakow. “I don’t want to go because I don’t want to become a target of attacks,” he said in private conversations to explain his decision, according to the source. (In his reply to Direkt36, Kov\u00e1cs did not comment on this specific episode, but stressed that last year he presented one of his books at five events in Poland.)<\/p>\n
A still higher-profile event was the resignation of Artur Balazs, Hungary’s honorary consul in Szczecin and a former Polish minister of agriculture with close ties to leading politicians in the ruling PiS party, from his post. “I fear that Viktor Orb\u00e1n, by maintaining his relationship with Putin, is creating the worst Hungarian-Polish and Hungarian-EU relationship in history,” he told valaszonline.hu while explaining his decision. Balazs told us that since his resignation, he no longer has any contact with the Hungarian Embassy in Warsaw, nor does he have any information about bilateral relations.<\/p>\n
Orsolya Kov\u00e1cs, who has held the post of Hungarian Ambassador to Warsaw since the beginning of 2017, has taken the events particularly badly, according to several sources involved in shaping Polish-Hungarian relations. Orsolya Kov\u00e1cs has been described as a good diplomat, a decent person and an excellent Poland expert with a broad network of contacts.<\/p>\n
Part of her network is due to her father, Istv\u00e1n Kov\u00e1cs, but she has also become an important player in Polish-Hungarian relations in her own right. Orsolya Kov\u00e1cs was, and still is, Viktor Orb\u00e1n’s long-time Polish interpreter. Since Jaros\u0142aw Kaczy\u0144ski, who heads Law and Justice, does not speak any foreign languages, he cannot communicate directly with Orb\u00e1n. “She has always been there at the Kaczy\u0144ski-Orb\u00e1n one-on-one meetings, and even after her appointment as ambassador, Kaczy\u0144ski insisted that she should interpret,” a source familiar with the internal affairs of the Hungarian foreign ministry said. According to the source, this made Kov\u00e1cs a confidant for both sides, “who knows everything, the highest level talks and even the most sensitive issues.”<\/p>\n
According to sources who know the ambassador personally, Kov\u00e1cs\u2014whose posting had expired, but was extended due to a clear lack of a suitable successor\u2014has said in private conversations that she wants to go home to Hungary. According to the sources, Kov\u00e1cs elaborated that she was finding the deterioration of Hungarian-Polish relations difficult to bear and that she was less and less able to put her face to the Orb\u00e1n government’s policy towards Ukraine. (Neither Kov\u00e1cs nor the Hungarian foreign ministry reacted to our request for comment.)<\/p>\n
In an example typical of diplomatic difficulties, while every EU country\u2019s embassy in Warsaw immediately displayed the Ukrainian flag on its own premises, the Hungarian Embassy in Warsaw was not allowed to do so. According to a source familiar with the case, though Kov\u00e1cs tried to explain at length to the Hungarian foreign ministry why this was necessary, but no one at the level of deputy state secretary or state secretary dared to give her permission. “She had to explain why they were asking for this, that this is Poland and everyone there is putting up the Ukrainian flag. Because Hungarian embassies elsewhere or government institutions in Budapest have not put it up,” the source said, adding that the approval finally came from “the highest level.”<\/p>\n
A more serious inconvenience arose in another case when, partly at the intervention of Orsolya Kov\u00e1cs, the Polish government did Hungary a favor, but quickly came to regret it. At Hungary’s request, weeks after the outbreak of the war and the ban on Russian flights, they allowed a Russian plane carrying nuclear fuel from Russia to the Paks 1 nuclear power plant to fly over Poland multiple times in April.<\/p>\n
“They were really not happy, but they allowed it. Then the press found out about it and reported it, and that’s what caused the fuss,” a source familiar with the internal affairs of the Hungarian foreign ministry recalled, adding that the Polish government then vowed not to allow any more such transfers. “The Poles are otherwise understanding about the existing Paks 1 nuclear plant, they know it has to be operated with the Russians. However, they do not understand why Paks 2 should be built with the Russians,” the source added.<\/p>\n
In an indication of dramatic change to come, ambassador Orsolya Kov\u00e1cs, who previously could easily get access to anyone in the Polish government or PiS leadership at almost any time, found after the outbreak of the war that all those doors were suddenly closed.<\/p>\n
“They simply canceled the Hungarian ambassador from one day to the next, and it happened everywhere,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
a source familiar with the Hungarian foreign ministry’s internal affairs as well as Polish affairs said. According to the source, rumors were spreading of an alleged ban on the ambassador and it looked very much as if the order had come from the PiS top leadership. According to this rumor, Kov\u00e1cs can only be received with special permission and should not be met by default.<\/p>\n
A Polish government source said he did not know whether there was a specific order coming from on high that said doors should be shut to Kov\u00e1cs, but added that he had heard the ambassador complain about this. “She could not arrange a single meeting because everyone turned away from her visibly, all at once,” the source said.<\/p>\n
Relations have become frosty not only at the ambassador\u2019s level, but also at the very top.<\/p>\n
II. THE DISAPPOINTMENT<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n
Jaros\u0142aw Kaczy\u0144ski, Orsolya Kov\u00e1cs and Viktor Orb\u00e1n at a meeting in 2021 Source: PiS \/ Facebook<\/p><\/div>\n
Many in the Polish leadership expected that, once the election campaign in April 2022 was over, the Orb\u00e1n government’s attitude to the war would change. Initially, and for some time, the Polish leadership believed that Hungarian statements about the war were just serving domestic election campaign purposes, and that, sooner or later, Orb\u00e1n and his Fidesz party would adopt position similar to the Poles. But they were proven wrong.<\/p>\n
The Hungarian prime minister lashed out at Ukraine on the eve of his election victory, when he listed president Volodymyr Zelensky among his political opponents in a speech. And a few days later, at an international press conference, he said that the mass graves uncovered in Bucha near Kyiv needed to be investigated first as he did not want to condemn Russia outright for the killing of civilians. Jaros\u0142aw Kaczy\u0144ski responded in a radio interview on April 8 by saying that “if Viktor Orb\u00e1n can’t see what happened in Bucha, he should go to see an eye doctor.”<\/p>\n
Such statements would have been unimaginable from the Polish leadership before. Kaczy\u0144ski and his Law and Justice party was considered the closest ally of the Orb\u00e1n government. The Poles and Hungarians supported each other wholeheartedly in the face of criticism and legal action from EU institutions. They also found common ground on political, ideological and cultural issues, whether it was putting pressure on independent journalism or restrictions on LGBT rights.<\/p>\n
“Even PiS party members themselves admitted in unofficial conversations that their draft laws were modeled on Hungarian laws. And they were always amazed at how Fidesz has won so many elections,” Grzegorz Schetyna, a leading Polish opposition politician, former foreign minister and former chairman of the opposition Civic Platform (PO), told us. As a center-right party and a member of the European People\u2019s Party (EPP), PO was for a long time Fidesz’s main ally in Poland, but the Hungarian attitude changed with the rise of the more conservative PiS. According to Schetyna, who also used to have a close relationship with the Hungarian prime minister, there was a transitional period during which Orb\u00e1n “played on two pianos at once,” trying to maintain good relations with both Polish parties. Eventually, he anchored himself with PiS.<\/p>\n
A clear turnaround came after Kaczy\u0144ski’s party came to power in autumn 2015 and quickly set about transforming Poland.<\/p>\n
“PiS learned from Fidesz in many areas, especially media and family policy,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
a source familiar with the internal affairs of the Hungarian foreign ministry who closely followed these negotiations said. Polish government officials in Warsaw and the Polish Embassy in Budapest also asked the Hungarians to provide them with legislation and research studies on the Orb\u00e1n government’s family policy measures.<\/p>\n
In particular, PiS has studied Hungarian law on family tax allowances in detail, and essentially copied it “one by one” in 2016, according to the source. The Kaczy\u0144ski government introduced legislation under which families would receive PLN 500 per month for every second and subsequent child, a measure that has contributed greatly to PiS’s popularity. It was not surprising that Warsaw was also keeping a close eye on several similar measures of the Orb\u00e1n government.<\/p>\n
“They also wanted to copy the CSOK (Family Housing Benefit, a state loan for buying new homes available to parents or married couples who pledge to have children), they studied this Hungarian solution intensively, but then the economic crisis intervened,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
the source familiar with the internal affairs of the Hungarian foreign ministry cited another example. According to Grzegorz Schetyna, PiS was also closely monitoring the Orb\u00e1n government’s methods of consolidating power, which were sold as economic crisis management measures. “PiS has carefully studied Hungarian laws and Orb\u00e1n’s know-how in limiting the power of local officials and cutting municipal funds,” Schetyna said.<\/p>\n
That the relationship was so harmonious for such a long time suggests that serious diplomatic tensions could only have been caused by personal interactions gone wrong.<\/p>\n
One such case was related to Hungarian foreign minister P\u00e9ter Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3. In 2021, at the International Economic Forum in Karpacz, Hungarian embassy staff were tasked with arranging an interview for Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3 with PiS-affiliated media owned by media tycoon Tomasz Sakiewicz. Sakiewicz is an influential figure in Polish government circles, described by a source familiar with the inner workings of the Hungarian foreign ministry as “the Lajos Simicska of PiS and Kaczy\u0144ski [comparing him to Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s former ally, the oligarch who once governed the pro-Orb\u00e1n media empire],” who helped create the party’s media background during the opposition days.<\/p>\n
Sakiewicz is the owner and editor-in-chief of the Gazeta Polska newspaper, and in connection with this newspaper, he has set up Gazeta Polska clubs similar to the Hungarian civic circles (small local political groups established by Fidesz throughout Hungary after their election defeat in 2002), whose members are typically small-town conservative people. This also gives Sakiewicz considerable political clout, as he can easily organize events and protests at any time through the network of clubs. It was also the Gazeta Polska clubs that used to organize charter trains to Budapest so that their supporters could parade with Polish flags at the so-called pro-Orb\u00e1n Peace Marches and at other Fidesz events marking Hungarian national holidays.<\/p>\n
This is the important man Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3\u2019s staff managed to offend at the 2021 event. Sakiewicz was also present in Karpacz, and when he saw the Hungarian foreign minister, he wanted to greet him personally. However, Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3’s staff did not recognize Sakiewicz, and one of the minister’s aides tried to keep him away by almost pushing him to the ground. According to a source familiar with the details of this episode, a member of Szijj\u00e1rt\u00f3’s staff even told local Hungarian embassy staff to “keep that fat idiot away from the minister!”<\/p>\n
“Sakiewicz was obviously outraged, and then poor Orsi Kov\u00e1cs had to apologize personally, making amends and sending him all sorts of gifts,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
the source added. (Sakiewicz did not reply to our comment request.)<\/p>\n
Alongside these incidents, an important substantive tension has been running through the relationship between the two governments. This was differing attitudes towards Russia. This predates Russia\u2019s all-out war in Ukraine: In February 2015, PiS announced that Jaros\u0142aw Kaczy\u0144ski had turned down a meeting initiated by Orb\u00e1n. According to the party, Kaczy\u0144ski decided to do so because he believed Orb\u00e1n\u2014who had received Vladimir Putin in Budapest a few days earlier\u2014was “destroying European solidarity.” (Hungary\u2019s government denied at the time that Orb\u00e1n had wanted to meet the PiS leader.)<\/p>\n
Later, probably partly as a result of joint Polish-Hungarian disputes with Brussels, these differences were pushed into the background. However, as the Russians made increasingly obvious preparations for an invasion of Ukraine in 2021, this deep-seated tension was bound to resurface again.<\/p>\n
One of the first signs of this was when Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki traveled to the countries of the region in the autumn of 2021 with information that he believed pointed to the conclusion that Russia was preparing for war. In November 2021, Morawiecki also visited Orb\u00e1n in Budapest for a Visegr\u00e1d Group (V4) meeting but his warnings fell on deaf ears. The official topic of the meeting was the refugee crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border, but Morawiecki also told Orb\u00e1n about evidence of an imminent Russian invasion.<\/p>\n
“He talked about the information he had not only on military operations, but also on the accumulation of roubles, on the cutting of welfare measures, all of which pointed to the Russians preparing for war,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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