Original article (in Montenegrin) was published on 10/02/2022
The Republic of Kosovo declared independence almost 13 years ago after many countries supported its sovereignty. One of the many countries that recognized independent Kosovo is Hungary, which did so in March 2008. Despite that decision, some Facebook users claim that Hungary will soon withdraw its recognition of Kosovo.
“Hungary withdraws recognition of Kosovo tomorrow. Let’s start from the beginning”, it is stated in the Facebook post, without further explanation.
This announcement attracted many positive reactions, although it is not possible to find a relevant source of this sensational information.
However, what can be found is the recent interview of the Ambassador of Hungary to Serbia, Attila Pinter, who, among other things, spoke about the recognition of Kosovo’s independence.
Asked to comment on the statements of some politicians in Serbia who believe that Hungary should withdraw the recognition of Kosovo’s independence, Pinter pointed out that this issue is not on the agenda.
“Of course, we are aware of the extreme sensitivity of this issue, however, it is not on the agenda of Hungarian foreign policy”, Pinter told Kosovoonline on January 26 this year.
The website B92 then shared his words in an article entitled “Will Hungary withdraw its recognition of so-called Kosovo?”. The same text offers an answer to this question.
What is also known is the fact that some political structures in Serbia, due to the good relations of their country with Hungary, demanded that the neighboring country withdraw the decision on the recognition of Kosovo, as evidenced by the appeal of the Dveri movement, which was sent to Viktor Orban this summer.
However, there are no indications that Hungary, which is a member of the EU, could do something like that.
We had the opportunity to read the announcements that Hungary will withdraw the recognition of Kosovo even earlier, as evidenced by the text from 2020.
From all the above, we can conclude that, despite the wishes and predictions of the public and politicians in Serbia, Hungary has not and does not plan to withdraw the decision on recognizing Kosovo’s independence, which the country’s ambassador to Serbia recently confirmed.
For that reason, we evaluate the post from Facebook stating that “Hungary withdraws recognition of Kosovo tomorrow” as fake news.
The “fake news” rating is given to the original media report (entirely produced by the media that published it) that contains factually incorrect claims or information. Content that is assessed as fake news could have been created and disseminated to misinform the public, that is, to present a claim that is entirely false as fact.