The European Union’s greatest strength lies in unity which must not be broken, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said on Thursday in Berlin after his talks with German political leaders.
In his interview given to the Hungarian public service media with regard to his talks with Peter Tauber, Secretary General of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and Christoph Heusgen, the Chancellor’s chief foreign policy advisor, the Minister highlighted that Germany, too, is searching for answers to the extremely grave challenges that the EU is facing, and „here, too, foreign policy has become a part of domestic policy”.
Download
He added that he told his partners: Hungary continues to build its European position on the strong cooperation of the Central-European region, the V4 Group (Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia), and holds that the unity of the EU must not be broken. All "forced discords must be put aside” – such as the alleged Eastern-European opposition – because they jeopardise the future of the EU.
Mr Szijjártó also attended the informal meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), about which he said: his colleagues spoke about a multitude of crises – from the crisis in Ukraine all the way to the "historical challenges” that Europe is facing –, a single one of which "would be more than enough in the entire OSCE region”. This, too, indicates that "the European security architecture has become disintegrated”, and therefore security must now be given the top priority.
In this situation, the OSCE, in which the United States, Russia as well as the large European and Central-Asian countries are equally represented, has enormous significance, the Minister added, stressing: "if anywhere, it is in this organisation that there is a chance for Russian-American cooperation to come into being”, which is the primary condition for restoring European security.
If there is no Russian-American cooperation, then there is no solution to the conflicts which are taking place in the EU’s south-east neighbourhood, while this will in turn destabilise Europe through the flow of immigration and the threat of terrorism, Mr Szijjártó underlined.
The OSCE is a forum that is also suitable for restoring cooperation between Western-Europe and Russia which is all the more important because, without pragmatic cooperation with Russia, Western-Europe cannot regain its competitiveness, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade added.
There is an increasingly strong conviction among the Foreign Ministers of the OSCE Member States that crises are there not to be managed, but to be resolved finally. This is the right approach "because this way reasonable positions may prevail over hypocritical views and political correctness”, Mr Szijjártó stressed.
(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade)
