“A new order has developed in the world, the opportunities of which can only be fully made use of if North America, Europe and Central Asia cooperate to a greater degree than they have so far”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said on Thursday in Hamburg at a session of the highest level governing body of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Ministerial Council.
In his speech, Mr Szijjártó stressed: “The political and economic transformations are undoubtedly deeper than ever before and the only question remaining is whether the new world order has already developed fully, or is still forming”.
The Foreign Minister pointed to the fact that “political correctness and hypocrisy are at an end” as the most important development relating to the appearance of the new world order. New economic areas are gaining ground and capital now flows not only in a west-east direction, but “successful eastern companies” are searching for routes to Europe, digitalization is becoming increasingly important and millions of people around the world are leaving their homelands, he added, noting that these changes provide exciting opportunities, but also pose a danger.
“If the North Americans, Eastern and Western Europeans and Central Asians succeed in working together more effectively then their highly trained workforces and highly developed infrastructure and technology will enable them to make use of the economic opportunities, improve their competitiveness and acquire a capital attraction capability surpassing that of any other region in the world. If they are incapable of improving their cooperation, however, then they will be unable to conquer the dangers of the new world order”, Mr. Szijjártó explained.
From among these dangers, the Hungarian Foreign Minister highlighted the fact that terrorism in Europe represents a greater danger than ever before as a result of “uncontrolled, unregulated and illegal mass migration and religious extremism”. Accordingly, North America, Eastern and Western Europe and Central Asia must perform five tasks, he declared.
Firstly, the Islamic State terrorist organisation “must finally be defeated”, and secondly the stability of the liberated territories must be assured to prevent the emergence of new terrorist organisations, Mr. Szijjártó stated.
“The third task is the protection of Christian communities throughout the world. We must not resign ourselves to allowing discrimination against Christians to remain an accepted form of prejudice”, the Foreign Minister continued.
With regard to the fourth task, Mr. Szijjártó stressed: “Assistance must be taken to where there is trouble instead of bringing the trouble here, and so instead of encouraging people to immigrate we must support countries in war-torn regions in their efforts to care for refugees”.
“The fifth task is the reorganisation of international development cooperation: countries that are the source of migration or which act as transit countries must only receive funding if they perform the necessary reforms to prevent more people from leaving their territory”, he said.
“An finally, we must stop flinging accusations and insults at each other and every country must respect the culture, heritage and history of other countries”, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade said.
Mr. Szijjártó is also holding several bilateral talks on the sidelines of the meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Hamburg, including with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Montenegrin Minister of Foreign Affairs Srđan Darmanović and Kazakh Foreign Minister Erlan Idrissov.