“Hungary has a particular interest in the successful establishment of a strategic partnership between Azerbaijan and the European Union in view of the fact that the most important element of this partnership is cooperation within the field of energy”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said on Monday in Budapest following talks with his Azerbaijani counterpart.

“With regard to Hungary’s energy security, ‘the most probable scenario for the most rapid diversification of gas procurements’ is Hungary’s connection to the Southern Gas Corridor, from which a significant proportion of natural gas will be arriving from Azerbaijan”, Mr. Szijjártó highlighted.

The Minister pointed out that intensive negotiations are ongoing between the EU and Azerbaijan on the establishment of a strategic partnership, and the talks have arrived at an important phase; following the introduction to the treaty, negotiations have now begun on the agreement’s sector-specific chapters.

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“The Trans-Anatolian pipeline, which will initially be able to transport 16 billion cubic metres of natural gas, and later 26 billion cubic metres of gas-a-year from Azerbaijan, will be completed next year”, the Minister explained. “This quantity of natural gas must be taken into account in future with from the perspective of Hungary’s natural gas supply, and this requires a route that connects Hungary to this gas corridor”, he explained.

Mr. Szijjártó also pointed out that a few weeks ago an agreement had been concluded with Russian energy company Gazprom, according to which Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary will be modernising their internal gas networks and will be establishing high capacity interconnections to enable Hungary to gain access to gas from Azerbaijan.

The Foreign Minister recalled that Croatia has still not begun construction of its promised LNG terminal, and Croatia and Romania are not assuring the two-way flow of natural gas via their interconnections to Hungary’s gas network.

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“Azerbaijan has already concluded strategic agreements with 11 EU member states”, he noted.

“The Hungary-Azerbaijan Joint Economic Committee will be holding a session in early October, after which the President of Azerbaijan will be visiting Hungary”, Mr. Szijjártó told reporters, adding that a meeting of foreign ministers from the Visegrád Group and the countries of the Eastern Partnership will be held in mid-September.

The Minister also spoke about the fact that Hungarian-Azerbaijani economic cooperation is becoming increasingly intensive, with more and more Hungarian enterprises and products appearing on the Azerbaijani market. Mr. Szijjártó cited as an example the fact that 130 pharmaceutical products manufactured by Hungarian enterprises are currently available in Azerbaijan, one of Europe’s largest cargo airlines, an Azerbaijani company, has doubled the number of weekly fights between Budapest and Baku, and Budapest Waterworks and its Azerbaijani partner company are currently in the process of realising several projects.

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Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov emphasised: “It is very important to reinforce cooperation between Azerbaijan and the EU, and this could be advantageous not only within the field of energy, but also for the freight transport sector in view of the fact that Azerbaijan’s geographical location is extremely favourable from this perspective”.

Mr. Mammadyarov said Azerbaijan would also like to strengthen bilateral cooperation with Hungary, to which the strategic partnership with the EU could contribute significantly.

The Azerbaijani Foreign Minister also said that the parties are not satisfied with bilateral trade figures and are committed to increasing bilateral trade flow. He mentioned education as another important field of bilateral relations, explaining that many students from Azerbaijan would gladly come to Hungary to study.

(Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister/MTI)