The customs agreement reached between the United States and the European Union is “a terrible economic agreement and an economic own goal“ for the bloc, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in an interview with public radio today, Hungarian news agency MTI reported, quoted by BTA.
“Everything that could be professionally wrong about this agreement was wrong”, Orban said.
”Not only did we make a bad deal – because all European goods exported to the US will have a 15% tariff, while there will be no tariffs on American goods coming into Europe – but we also agreed to conditions that we clearly cannot fulfill,” he explained. “This means that we have not settled the customs disputes. We have just lost the first battle, and there will be more“.
Orban said another factor behind the deal was that the EU would have to pay for the weapons the US is providing to Ukraine. “Nobody asked me about this. There is no European decision that declares that we want this“, the Hungarian prime minister said. “If we want to make a deal with the Americans on Ukraine, this should not be done as a secret clause in a customs agreement, but separately. It should be put on the table separately and negotiated separately“, Orban concluded.