“The importance of Visegrád and Central European cooperation is seeing a dramatic increase in view of the fact that the significance of politics based on common sense and rational thinking practiced by these countries has increased in the current, tense situation”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said on Monday in Budapest.

At the business forum held within the framework of the first meeting of foreign ministers of the new Hungarian presidency of the Visegrád Group (V4), Mr. Szijjártó declared: “Central Europe has become the European continent’s most competitive and most secure region”. “Thanks to rational economic policy, the economic growth of the V4 and Central Europe exceeds the European average, and it is no accident that the region is referred to as Europe’s engine of growth”, he pointed out.

“The migration policy practiced by these countries is also rational, and accordingly the people living here and the investments made in Hungary are absolutely safe”, he said.

According to Mr. Szijjártó, one of the greatest advantages of the V4 is that countries of the region have developed an interest in each other’s success, and never before has economic and trade cooperation between them been so strong under a market economy.

“At today’s meeting, the V4’s foreign ministers and their counterparts from Austria, Slovenia and Croatia will be discussing ways in which we can offer an even more favourable business environment and conditions for trade and investment”, he told the press. “We will be discussing the European integration of the Western Balkans, which is important from both a security and economic perspective, as well as a joint policy aimed at security”, he explained.

“We are doing everything that is politically possible”; the channels for cooperation have already been established, the Hungarian Foreign Minister stressed. Accordingly, he encouraged the businesspeople attending the forum to exploit the fact that there are excellent political relations between the countries of Central Europe and that their relationships are not burdened by open issues that hinder economic relations or make them impossible.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade/MTI)