The Hungarian Government is receiving feedback from Western-Europe with increasing frequency that it is on the right track in the management of the migration crisis, the Minister of State of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said on Wednesday in Budapest.
László Szabó stated at the event of the Joint Venture Association representing the interests of partly or fully foreign-owned businesses operating in Hungary: as the migrant question is increasingly becoming a tangible problem in Western-Europe, rather than a „remote, tenuous story”, so change the opinions as to whether Hungary is doing the right thing or not.
The German Government approved the acceleration of the registration of migrants just this Tuesday, he remarked. They are adopting the same measures, one by one, which the Hungarian Government adopted several months ago, the Minister of State said. We are probably on the right track as almost every measure Austria and Germany are adopting now Hungary already adopted 2 to 3 months ago, he added.
The Minister of State pointed out: we have succeeded in laying the foundations of a new foreign policy in Hungary in the past year, and our foreign trade interests are being enforced more emphatically. Wherever we wanted to be present – in the East, on the Asian markets, and in the South, in Latin-America and Africa – Hungary has an attaché for foreign trade, and we have concluded the necessary bilateral agreements, he said.
Mr Szabó highlighted: we are pursuing the right direction, as testified to by the country’s macro-economic data. The goal continues to remain to increase the volume of our exports, to increase the number of small and medium-sized businesses which are capable of exporting goods and services, to increase the domestic added value, to attract projects which create new jobs, to enhance research and development, and to increase our supplier capacities.
In addition to migration, the Minister of State further mentioned among Hungary’s foreign trade difficulties that the development of the world economic situation is somewhat uncertain due to the slowing down of the Chinese economy and in the light of the VW scandal. Mr Szabó also mentioned the topic of energy security. As he said, Hungary’s energy supply continues to remain in need of diversification, and we must reduce our unilateral dependence on Russia. To this end, it is necessary to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Croatia, and it is further necessary to accelerate the development of the north-south-bound energy corridors in Eastern-Central-Europe.
Péter Tálos, President of the Joint Venture Association highlighted in his lecture: Hungarian exports bound for outside Europe are essential because we must reduce our dependence on the EU market. To achieve this, in addition to joining the chain of suppliers of the multinational companies settled in Hungary, we also need Hungarian companies which are capable of exporting goods and services from their own resources. He designated two possible areas for increasing the volume of exports: innovation, i.e. the development of new solutions and procedures, and the production of premium-quality agricultural products.