Hungary refuses to support the Dutch Prime Minister for the position of NATO Secretary General

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The Hungarian Foreign Minister announced on Tuesday that his country won’t support Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte assuming the position of next Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

It’s widely believed that Rutte is the most likely candidate to lead the alliance to succeed Lens Stoltenberg, after the United States, Britain, and Germany expressed support for his potential candidacy.

However, Hungary won’t support Rutte, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó said in response to journalists’ questions, considering that supporting Budapest would be strange.

“We certainly cannot support the election of a person to the position of NATO Secretary General who previously wanted to bring Hungary to its knees,” he said.

In 2021, Rutte said that Hungary shouldn’t be part of the European Union after the central European country passed a law banning the promotion of gay-related content to minors.

Over the past two years, NATO has faced a challenging security environment in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Stoltenberg’s successor, the former Norwegian prime minister who served as NATO secretary-general for a decade, is expected to be announced before a summit in Washington in July.

No decision is confirmed until consensus is reached on a single candidate, in accordance with NATO rules.

Rutte (57) is currently the head of the transitional government after the party of far-right leader Geert Wilders won the largest number of seats in the general elections that took place in the Netherlands last November, but he hasn’t yet been able to form a government.

Nationalist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban welcomed the “winds of change” after Wilders’ victory.

Last month, Orban’s government became the latest government to approve Sweden’s request to join NATO, after a delay of more than a year that upset other members of the alliance.

Hungary is the only EU member state to maintain close relations with the Kremlin in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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