“The European Union should lift its restrictions on the state funding of investment projects until the end of this year, because it is only through investments that new workplaces can be created”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said on his Facebook page on Wednesday following an online conference of the Visegrád Group countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, the V4) and the Northern-Baltic-Eight (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden, the NB8).

Mr. Szijjártó pointed out that the European Union currently enables states to provide a maximum of 800 thousand euros in funding towards investment projects. “The Hungarian government has exploited this to provide over 170 billion forints (EUR 492 million) in funding to 806 Hungarian enterprises, to enable them to protect existing workplaces”, he highlighted.

According to the Minister, the countries of Europe must concentrate on protecting workplaces and on the creation of new jobs, and accordingly the 800-thousand-euro limit must be abolished, and states must be allowed to provide unlimited resources from their own national budgets to fund investment projects until the end of this year.

Mr. Szijjártó said that during the procurement of the equipment needed for health protection, the countries of Europe were vulnerable, and “everyone was standing in line at China’s door”. For this reason, during the meeting he asked the foreign ministers of the participant countries to take this into account with relation to European policy concerning China. “Cooperation must be practical and mutual, and double standards must be avoided so as not to create a situation in which the large countries are the beneficiaries of cooperation, while the smaller countries pay the price”, he emphasised.

He also spoke about the fact that the governments of several European countries have spread lies an fake news about Hungary, according to which its Parliament is not in session and the government will never declare the state of emergency to be over, as a result of which it will continue to rule by decree indefinitely. “These are all untrue, as the government has already submitted the bill on returning the mandate to Parliament”, he declared. “The government doesn’t care what they think about it abroad; it practices its politics based on the opinion and expectations of the Hungarian people”, Mr. Szijjártó underlined.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade / MTI)