Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó held talks on border crossing opportunities for commuters living near the Hungarian-Serbian border and the acceleration of the construction of the Szeged-Subotica railway line in Belgrade on Thursday.

The politician met with Serbian Finance Minister Siniša Mali in the Serbian capital. As he explained, the two countries live in close interdependence in Central Europe even in “normal times”, but this interdependence is even more evident in times of emergency. “Both parties have and interest in being economically successful”, he added. “Even tighter economic cooperation will be required between the two countries in the interests of us being economically successful in the period following the pandemic”, declared Mr. Szijjártó, pointing our that trade flow between the two countries achieved a new record of 2.6 billion euros last year.

“We must work to ensure that this suffers the most minimal possible decline this year, and accordingly, we have agreed to maintain the unrestricted nature of freight traffic between the two countries at the three border crossing points at which this is currently already possible, in addition to which we have begun concrete negotiations on affording commuters who live on either side of the border the opportunity to cross the border to work”, he detailed.

In addition, the two parties agreed that rather that slowing down, the construction of the railway line linking Szeged and Subotica (Szabadka) will be accelerating, in view of the fact that it is important with relation to future economic cooperation between the two countries, Mr. Szijjártó told the press.

We can expect major economic development programmes in both Serbia and Hungary, which create an opportunity for the economies of the two countries to grow stronger, with relation to which the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter pointed out that “if we link our resources and efforts, then we may achieve a major advantage in the regional competition in the period following the global pandemic”.

The Minister drew attention to the fact that both Budapest and Belgrade are encouraging enterprises to work in as close cooperation as possible, to which end a 150-million-dollar credit line has been opened at Hungary’s EximBank.

Mr. Szijjártó highlighted that the Vojvodina Economic Development Programme is continuing despite the epidemic “since it is in our interests for Vojvodina to become increasingly strong economically, and this is also in the interests of Serbia”.

“Both parties will be striving to ensure that cooperation between the two countries creates an opportunity for both Hungary and Serbia to be successful in the period following the global pandemic”, the Minister underlined.

(MTI)