“Instead of continuously criticizing and attacking the U.S. President, Hungary is strongly urging the international community to begin negotiations with the United States on the conditions under which it would at least be prepared to take part in the Paris climate agreement”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó told Hungarian news agency MTI by telephone on Thursday.

This is the standpoint that the Minister will be putting forward at the European Union Arctic Conference, which will begin in Oulu, Finland on Thursday afternoon.

According to Mr. Szijjártó, U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement that America will be exiting the Paris Agreement should be regarded as “given”.

“No matter the constant barrage of criticism, the President of the United States will not revoke his decision. Now we must approach the issue pragmatically and realistically, and ask ourselves how we can achieve the best possible results in the current circumstances with relation to the Paris Agreement”, said Mr. Szijjártó, according to whom negotiations must be launched on U.S. obligations.

“For this reason, we are calling on the international community to also hear the second part of President Trump’s statement, namely that the U.S. may be exiting the agreement, but is prepared to renegotiate its conditions and obligations”, the Minister said. Negotiations must begin on America’s obligations in view of the fact that it is much better if the Americans “shoulder at least a part of their previously undertaken obligations, and are prepared to become at least partly engaged in the agreement, than if they did not participate at all”.

At the conference, the Minister will also be speaking about the fact that events beyond the Arctic Circle are having extremely serious economic, energetics, security and environmental effects on the whole of Europe. According to some forecasts, all the ice covering the area beyond the Arctic Circle will disappear within 20-40 years, which will have very serious effects.

If this occurs, trade routes will be transformed completely, and it will be a lot easier, faster and shorter to ship products to Europe from the Far East via the Arctic Sea north of Russia, instead of the current detour though the Suez Canal.

Secondly, according to various studies 13 percent of the world’s oil reserves and 30 percent of its natural gas reserves can be found under the Arctic Sea, and if this can be extracted then the energy security situation of the whole European continent will clearly also change, the Minister continued.

According to Mr. Szijjártó, this is precisely why the dispute regarding ownership of the northern territories has already begun, which could have major security repercussions.

However, it is obvious that the environmental effects must also be managed, for which the best instrument so far has been the Paris Agreement, and it is no accident that Hungary was the first EU country to ratify the Agreement, he said.

Prior to the Conference, Mr. Szijjártó will be meeting with EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini to discuss the acceleration of the EU enlargement process.

“Hungary is one of the greatest supporters of the integration process of the Western Balkan countries, and as the next President of the Visegrád Group (V4) one of our priorities will be to support and accelerate the integration of countries in the region”, said Mr. Szijjártó, according to whom it is Europe’s economic and security policy interests for the Western Balkans to become integrated into the European Union at the earliest opportunity.

During the course of the day, the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade will be holding several bilateral meetings in Oulu, including with Norwegian Minister for EU Affairs Frank Bakke-Jensen, Greenland’s Minister of Foreign affairs Suka Frederiksen and Finnish Foreign Minister Timos Soini.

(MTI)