The foreign ministries of Hungary and Ukraine have begun technical online consultations to resolve disagreements in bilateral relations.
Hungary’s new Prime Minister Péter Magyar and his Foreign Minister Anita Orbán announced the move on Wednesday.
"With the formation of the Tisza Party government, there is an opportunity to open a new chapter in Hungarian-Ukrainian relations," Magyar said at a press conference during his visit to Warsaw.
Magyar, whose centre-right Tisza Party won the parliamentary election in April, has been in office since May 9.
His predecessor, the right-wing populist Viktor Orbán, had pursued a pro-Russian policy and treated Ukraine, which was under attack by Russia, with hostility.
During the election campaign, he had Magyar depicted on posters as a puppet of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. There was no evidence to support the claim that Magyar was being "funded" by Ukraine.
Orbán’s attacks on Ukraine were often based the pretext of alleged disregard for the rights of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine.
According to the Hungarian account, up to 100,000 ethnic Hungarians live in the western Ukrainian region of Transcarpathia. Magyar also expects Ukraine to make improvements for them, such as the guarantee of school education in the Hungarian language.
Regulating these rights is the one "indispensable condition" for Hungary to agree within the EU to the opening of the first chapter in Ukraine’s accession negotiations, Magyar said in Warsaw.
Should a satisfactory agreement be reached, he would be prepared to meet Zelensky in the Transcarpathia region in early July, Magyar said.
"Real progress requires an open, honest and professional dialogue based on clear legal guarantees," Anita Orbán – who is not related to the ousted head of government – wrote on her Facebook page.
