Bucharest, July 17, 2025 – RBJ – Earthquake in diplomatic relations in the Eastern bloc. Poland has degraded its bilateral diplomatic relations with Hungary. This is how Budapest assessed the dismissal of the Polish ambassador to Budapest. The details were provided by the spokesman for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Paweł Wroński.
The spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Paweł Wroński, announced that Sebastian Kęciek has terminated his mandate as Poland’s ambassador to Hungary. Wroński also stated that Poland is represented in Budapest by a diplomat with the rank of chargé d’affaires and that he has no information to offer regarding the future situation.
In December of the previous year, Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski recalled the Polish ambassador to Hungary “for indefinite consultations in Warsaw.” The decision came after Viktor Orbán’s government granted political asylum to Marcin Romanowski, a PiS MP and former deputy minister of justice. “The reason why Ambassador Sebastian Kęciek was recalled to Warsaw was the following: Hungary made an unfriendly gesture towards Poland, contrary to the principle of loyalty in the EU, namely by granting political asylum to the former deputy minister of justice, Romanowski, who is accused of criminal and financial crimes, and, moreover, he had previously stated that he would respond to all summonses from the prosecutor’s office,” Wroński emphasized.
Oh, where are the times when the Budapest-Warsaw axis was considered the most versatile and efficient bilateral relationship in Europe.
When Viktor Orbán visited Krakow in 2016, the Hungarian prime minister peppered his speech with praise for the special nature of the Polish-Hungarian friendship. “I think no other people in the world have such a good opinion of Poland and the Polish people as Hungarians do – and similarly, no other people in the world have such a good opinion of Hungarians as the people here in Poland do,” Orbán said.
Eight years later, the same Viktor Orbán said: “The Poles have the most moralizing and hypocritical politics in all of Europe,” adding that he had “not seen such hypocritical politics in Europe in the last 10 years.”
Hungary’s Foreign Ministry called the ambassador’s dismissal an “official downgrade of bilateral diplomatic relations.” “The gradual deterioration of political relations has led to this regrettable step, unprecedented in the history of relations with our Central European partners,” State Secretary Levente Magyar wrote on Facebook. He added that “this is a temporary situation that will not ruin the historical friendship between Hungarians and Poles.” “Despite the current political disputes, we are ready to maintain dialogue, preparing for the good times that will come in the alliance of our countries,” he assured the government representative in Budapest.
The cooling and, now, freezing of diplomatic relations between the two states was foreshadowed as early as last year. At the beginning of 2025, the Polish side announced that, due to Budapest’s actions, the presence of the Hungarian ambassador at the opening gala of the Polish presidency of the EU Council was unwanted. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was also not invited to the gala, which took place in Warsaw in January.
The events of these days put a big question mark on the
existence of the Visegrad Group. A grouping of the four former socialist countries: Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Visegrad meetings have been frozen for several years. Prospects?: uncertain.
With a breaking news report from Rzeszpolpolita. The newspaper reports that Karol Nawrocki, the new president of Poland, has given his first interview abroad as president-elect. This would not be surprising, except that he did not speak to a prominent European media outlet, but to the Hungarian pro-government group Mandiner, close to Viktor Orbán. Hypocrisy?
Source: PAP, Warsaw press
