Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told a large audience in central Romania on July 22 that the Foreign Ministry in Bucharest has given him a list of sensitive topics he should avoid in his public addresses at an annual event held by leaders of Romania's Hungarian minority in Transylvania.
Orban last year triggered a wave of international criticism after a speech at the same event in Baile Tusnad in which he warned against mixing with "non-Europeans."
His words at the time were harshly criticized by the United States, the European Parliament, and Jewish community representatives.
"Every year, choosing what our topics for discussion should be causes headaches," Orban told an audience of several thousand mostly ethnic Hungarians on July 22.
"I understand that this year Romania's Foreign Ministry came to our help and told me what I have permission to talk about and what not, and what I should avoid," he said. "They told us all this in an official document, I am letting you know."
Orban, who has been in power since 2010, has been at odds with the European Union, of which Hungary is a member, over Brussels' concerns about a democratic backslide and corruption in his country, which the European Parliament last year classified as an "electoral autocracy."
Orban, who touts himself as a defender of Christian values, has also been at odds with the EU over Hungary's hard-line anti-immigration policies and LGBT rights.
He has also had disagreements with the bloc over his government's refusal to send arms to Ukraine. Orban has been against the EU's imposing sanctions on Russia and has kept warm relations with President Vladimir Putin.
Orban said that among the topics the Romanian Foreign Ministry letter listed as not permitted for discussion were minorities' rights, national symbols, and presenting Western values in a bad light.
"Western values are migration, LGBT [rights], and war. We do not have to put them in a bad light, since they themselves do that," Orban said, to the applause of the audience.
Romania's ethnic Hungarian minority numbers some 1.2 million, or 6 percent of the total population, and it is mostly concentrated in three districts in the central part of the country.
Orban claimed that Hungary's upcoming EU presidency in the second half of next year would be critical for Romania's being finally admitted in the Schengen free travel zone.
However, there has been discussion about Brussels delaying Hungary's rotative EU presidency due to its backsliding on democracy. Furthermore, approval of the accession of a country into the Schengen zone must be given unanimously by all the other 26 members of the group.