Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó declared at the Foreign Ministerial meeting of the Visegrad Group (V4), the Nordic Council (NC) and the Baltic states (B3) that started on Thursday and ends in the late afternoon on Friday in Slovakia by Lake Csorba, that establishing Central Europe’s energy security is not the responsibility of the region but that of Europe; therefore, the European Union also needs to play a role in that.
According to the Hungarian politician, the participants of the meeting shared a common position according to which energy security is the „most pressing issue” in Central Europe, and they more or less agreed that it is also the responsibility of Europe to resolve the issue.
„This is what justifies the expectation from the European Commission to answer which Central European energy investments will be supported by the European institutions”, argued Péter Szijjártó adding that the real step forward in the region would be the establishment of the North-South infrastructure. He noted that the only significant step in this respect was the construction of the interconnector between Slovakia and Hungary.
At the summit meeting, Péter Szijjártó also emphasised the importance of the diversification of European sources of gas supply and that of routes. „Our interest– and we think that we share this with Europe – is that as much gas should arrive through as many routes and pipes to Europe as possible because this is how security of supply and low prices can be ensured, he indicated. He said that it is already known that Russia is planning to transport the gas that it formerly intended to transport through the failed South Stream to Turkey; however, the question of the gas transport route to Central Europe remains unanswered. A quintilateral meeting - to be held in April in Budapest to discuss these possibilities - will be attended by the Hungarian, the Greek, the Serbian and the Macedonian Foreign Ministers, as well as by Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the European Union Member States, he added.
In addition to energy security, the situation in Ukraine, the issues of the Eastern Partnership and terrorism were also on the agenda of the meeting by Lake Csorba.
As regards the issue of terrorism and in relation to the threat posed by the Islamic State (IS), the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade argued that the Hungarian government is committed to increase its efforts in the actions against IS, so it is also committed to send soldiers for the fight against the terrorist organisation to secure the training activities of the Western countries by means of fulfilling security tasks.
Péter Szijjártó declared that he made it obvious at the consultation on the situation in Ukraine that the Hungarian government considers only the peaceful resolution viable. „We also made a commitment to the necessity of the extension of the mandate and to increasing the staff of the OSCE observation mission”, he added.
Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of Slovakia Miroslav Lajčák said in relation to the issue, evaluating the implementation of the Minsk Agreement that the situation in Ukraine is not ideal, but there seems to be a clear positive development in the wake of the Minsk Agreement. The Slovak Foreign Minister said in response to a journalist’s question on the extension of EU (economic) sanctions against Russia which are due to expire in July that the leaders of the EU member states will only make a final decision at their summit next week, but the majority still shares the opinion that these sanctions must be maintained.
The two-day summit by the Lake Csorba resort is already the third event in a row where the leaders of foreign affairs of three European regional alliances – the V4 (Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland), the Nordic Council (Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Sweden) and the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) jointly participated with the aim of strengthening their joint efforts within the European Union (EU) and discussing relevant issues. Two former similar meetings were held in February 2013 in Gdańsk (Poland) and last March in Narva (Estonia). The next summit meeting will be hosted by Latvia in one year.
(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade)
