Hungary’s president Janos Ader has called on Ukraine and Romania to stop polluting two major rivers that flow across Hungary after floods in the past weeks brought in „dirty carpets” of plastic bottles from its neighbors.
In letters to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, published Tuesday on Ader’s official website, he said Hungarian authorities could not clean up all the waste in the Tisza and Szamos rivers, Reuters news agency reported.
Ader, who’s been president since 2012, a largely ceremonial role, said in the letters that since mid-June Hungarian authorities had removed 938 cubic metres of waste from the Tisza river and 846 cubic metres of waste from the Szamos river.
The Tisza (Tisa in Romanian), one of the main rivers in eastern Europe, starts in Ukraine and flows across Hungary to join the Danube in Serbia.
The Szamos (Somes in Romanian) flows from northwest Romania to Hungary and joins the Tisza there. Pollution on the two rivers has been a problem for years.
The Ukrainian and Romanian presidents’ offices were not immediately available for comment, Reuters reported.
