“In recent years Hungarian foreign policy has succeeded in assuring that the world powers that have the greatest influence on the life of Central Europe have an interest in Hungary’s success”, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said on Wednesday in Székesfehérvár at a public forum.
“The decisions and policies of the United States, Germany, Russia, China and Turkey have a significant effect on the region, and today they all have an interest in Hungary’s success”, Mr. Szijjártó said.
Speaking before some two hundred people as a guest at the “Fehérvár Public Meetings” forum, he said with regard to the United States: “Political relations between the two countries have fallen to an all time low during the past two and a half years, while closer economic links have developed between American companies and Hungary than ever before”.
During President Obama’s second term in office there were strong attempts to intervene in Hungarian internal affairs, he noted, but said it was good news that the new president, Donald Trump, “had removed from the dictionary the term exporting democracy”, which had led to instability and outstanding conflicts in North Africa and the Middle East, and which posed a major threat to Europe’s security.
According to Mr. Szijjártó, Hungary has become the Central European bastion of the US economy; 1650 American-owned companies provide jobs for more than 100 thousand Hungarians, the total level of American investment now exceeds nine billion dollars and last year for the first time ever the United States became Hungary’s number one expert market outside the European Union.
The Minister told reporters that Hungary had always striven to maintain pragmatic cooperation with Russia, because “we have no choice but to maintain normal relations with the Russians”, primarily because of our dependency on Russian energy.
Mr. Szijjártó said that in his opinion the European Union’s policy of imposing economic sanctions against Russia has been a failure, had caused major damage to every country in Europe and was also a politically mistaken decision, because it has not succeeded in forcing any kind of headway with regard to enforcing the Minsk Agreements.
The Foreign Minister said it was a major achievement that Hungary is now the destination for the most Chinese investments in Central Europe, in addition to which Hungary exports the most to China.
With relation to Turkey, Mr. Szijjártó said that with relation to migration the security of Europe “is in Turkey’s hands”, while some European leaders are continuously attacking the current Turkish government, which is “rather absurd”.
“There are differences of opinion with Germany on the subject of migration, but the Germany party is increasingly talking about topics such as border protection and separating migrants from refugees, which the Hungarian Government has been proposing for two years now”, he said, noting that the two governments have always agreed that going into debt it too high a price to pay for economic growth and that European security cannot be solely dependent on the United States.
Mr. Szijjártó noted that the German and Hungarian economies remain very closely linked; “The modern Germany manufacturing industry provides the backbone of the Hungarian economy”.