After a meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels on Monday, Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said the EU is willing to sacrifice the Transcarpathian Hungarian community and its rights for the sake of Ukraine's "lightning" accession.

Minister Szijjártó said the Ukrainian foreign minister had called the status of the community "an artificial issue" at the meeting, and this was "totally unacceptable".

Equally intolerable was that several EU member states had backed the Ukrainian minister's position, a ministry statement quoted Minister Szijjártó as saying, adding that some had even questioned whether Hungary had "the right to assess the situation of the Hungarian community in Transcarpathia at all".

"We do not accept anyone denying our right to assess the legal situation of our national community," he added.

Minister Szijjártó said his German and Austrian counterparts had "tried to educate him" about Kyiv's recent achievements in this area, arguing that the Hungarian minority's rights were in fact respected.

But their rights, he said, had been "systematically violated" over ten years, adding that Hungary's government would continue to staunchly insist on the restoration of their rights.

Ukraine's accession negotiations would not get anywhere "until the rights of the Hungarian national community are fully restored", he said.

Also, Hungarians would decide whether Ukraine joined the bloc when a referendum soon takes place in Hungary, he added.

Minister Szijjártó said a unanimous decision by members of both the EU and NATO was necessary to allow a state to join the organisations. Hungary, he added, was not the one who was waiting to join an organisation of which Ukraine was already a member, rather it was "the other way around".