“Joint action on the part of the countries of the Visegrád Group (V4) fully serves the Hungarian national interest, and accordingly the maintaining of this joint action is also a national interest”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said in Warsaw on Thursday.

Mr. Szijjártó held a lecture for Polish ambassadors at the invitation of Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz. “In recent years, the Visegrád Cooperation (cooperation between the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) has proven that it is the strongest and most effective alliance within the European Union. There have been several attempts to break up the group on the part of the international press and political elite, but these have all been unsuccessful, while the Visegrád Group (V4) was able to remain successful”, the Minister declared.

“A few years ago, perhaps few people would have thought that we could successfully counter the introduction of mandatory resettlement quotas. I think many would only have given us very little chance of successfully being able to prevent the appointment of Frans Timmermans to the head of the European Commission”, Mr. Szijjártó explained, adding: “The Visegrád Group is being portrayed in a false and deceptive manner within the European Union; they are trying to push us into the position of a kind of black sheep and depict us as taking action against European unity, whereas in fact the truth is that we would like a strong Europe, but we believe that a strong Europe requires strong member states”. “We believe that if the nations of Europe remain strong, and if the nations of Europe insist on their national identity, culture, and religious and historical heritage, then we will be able to jointly build a European Union that is strong again”, said the Minister, according to whom this undoubtedly goes against the position of the European mainstream, but it is nevertheless a European position, even though it may for the moment still be in a minority.

“We have agreed to continue to make a stand in favour of a strong European Union made up of strong nationas, and will also continue to hold our ground with relation to the fight against migration”, Mr. Szijjártó underlined. “We will be taking loud and determined action against any and all attempts to make the distribution of migrants mandatory”, the Minister declared. “We are also in agreement with relation to the fact that the competitiveness of Central Europe can be traced back to responsible economic policy, and accordingly we will under no circumstances be supporting those Western European proposals that would lead to tax increases in Hungary or Central Europe, and will also not be supporting Western proposals that would mean the communitisation of government debts”, he continued.

“We continue to clearly believe in the fact that Central Europe is now contributing to Europe’s economic performance. This is also what the numbers indicate”, the Minister underlined, adding that it is no accident that four out of the EU’s five most rapidly developing economies can be found in Central Europe, including 3 Visegrád Group countries. “We have obviously become the European Union’s engine of growth. This is a success for the people of Central Europe, and we will never accept any attempts to strip us of this achievement”, the Minister declared, adding “The Polish Foreign Minister and I agreed to further reinforce cooperation between Poland and Hungary, and this serves both Polish and Hungarian national interests”. During his visit to Warsaw, the Hungarian Foreign Minister also met with Archbishop of Warsaw Kazimierz Nycz and Minister of Entrepreneurship and Technology Jadwiga Emilewicz.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade/MTI)