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Coronavirus pandemic

Hungarian top diplomat justifies move to purchase Russian, Chinese coronavirus vaccines

BELGRADE, March 17. /TASS/. Hungary and Serbia did the right thing when they decided to purchase coronavirus vaccines from Russia and China, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said in an interview with Serbia’s Tanjug news agency.

"I think that Serbia made the right decision, and we made the right decision, too, when we decided to purchase vaccines from Russia and China," he pointed out. "Over two million people [have been vaccinated] in your country [Serbia] and 1.4 million in our country. It would have been impossible without the Russian and Chinese vaccines," Szijjarto noted.

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When speaking about the possible introduction of vaccine passports that would not include vaccines not approved in the European Union, the Hungarian top diplomat said: "EU regulations determine two ways to approve a vaccine. The first one includes the usual approval by the European medicines regulator, but there is also another way that our friends forget to mention, and it provides for a national regulator to issue emergency use authorization. Clearly, we are in an emergency situation at the moment and national regulators have the right to issue permissions," Szijjarto added.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic earlier slammed the EU’s plans to introduce vaccine certificates as pointless. According to him, the initiative "tramples on one of the biggest European values, freedom of movement." Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin, in turn, said that "the migration crisis caused a fatal wound to the idea of European solidarity and the coronavirus pandemic killed it off.".

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