OREANDA-NEWS. “It is time to stop Europe’s continuous criticism of the British Government and instead begin thinking about what should be changed in Brussels”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said.

“On Monday, Central Europeans will begin ‘re-buttoning the European coat’; there will be a meeting of Visegrád Group (V4) Foreign Ministers in Prague after which the Minsters will hold talks with their German colleague. Later, at the proposal of the Polish Foreign Minister, there will be a meeting of non-V4 Foreign Ministers in Warsaw at which the countries of Central Europe seem certain to attend for the moment”, the Minister told Hungarian news agency MTI on Sunday.

“The Hungarian standpoint is that it is time for Europe to stop criticising the British and the British Government. The British decision must be respected, only they can decide what future they want for Great Britain, and accordingly the criticism of the British and their government should cease immediately”, Mr. Szijjártó said.

“We should finally leave the hysteria behind us” with relation to negotiations on the exit, he said, pointing out that “This will not be a bureaucratic issue, so instead of calling for the rapid commencement of exit negotiations the EU should first determine what standpoint it wants to represent at the talks”. “The important thing isn’t when the negotiations will begin, but that they should begin once the EU knows exactly what it wants”, he added.

According to Mr. Szijjártó, Central Europe will be playing a particularly important role because it has major interests that it must represent at the exit negotiations. “There is major economic cooperation between the countries of Central Europe and Great Britain, in addition to which hundreds of thousands of Central Europeans are working in the UK”, he said.

“This is why it makes a difference how regulation issues concerning economic relations and the Central Europeans working there develop during the exit negotiations”, the Hungarian Foreign Minister highlighted, adding that “For these reasons the countries of the region will already begin discussing the issue on Monday”.

Mr. Szijjártó also stated that “When continuously criticising the British the EU should take into account that it is the European Union’s second largest economy that has decided to exit the Union, i.e. instead of criticism they should start thinking about “what needs changing extremely rapidly in Brussels”.