On Tuesday, following talks with Palestinian Foreign Affairs Minister Riyad al-Malki on the territory of the Palestinian National Authority, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said in reference to correlations between the tragic events in Paris and the EU’s migration policy that the reactions of EU leaders are astonishing and shocking.

The first point on the agenda of the Ramallah discussions was the European migration crisis. The Minister emphasised: “I find statements of European politicians that cannot draw the appropriate conclusions from the events in Paris shocking and astonishing”.

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Mr. Szijjártó said that it is shocking that some of the European politicians still do not understand that maintaining the policy of uncontrolled borders will have the consequence of yet other hundreds of thousands of people arriving in Europe in an unsupervised manner, thus posing further security threats to the people in Europe.”

“Thus the security situation of Europe will keep worsening while the policy of open borders is still intact” – he concluded.

The Hungarian and Palestinian Foreign Ministers agreed that first, the root causes of the problem must be solved and that bad international political decisions have led to the instability which now surrounds Europe. They were of the opinion that hese decisions must be rectified, and the area surrounding Europe must be stabilized with the involvement of the European Union.

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“Since the migration crisis has pointed out the importance of stability in the region more clearly than ever, we suggest solving this local conflict through negotiations, as soon as possible”, Mr. Szijjártó told the reporter of Hungarian news agency MTI.

Bilateral relations were also discussed in Ramallah. In this regard, Mr. Szijjártó said that it is in the interest of Hungary to further develop economic cooperation. To this end, at the beginning of next year a Hungarian – Palestinian Business Forum will be held in Budapest, where the Palestinian delegation will be led by the Palestinian Foreign Minister himself.

As a result of these efforts, Hungary expects a significant improvement in trade relations; meanwhile both parties are calling for cooperation between the two Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

Palestinians would like to significantly increase their sources for food supplies and in order to help that, Budapest will support Hungarian agricultural companies in strengthening their presence in the local markets.
Mr. Szijjártó also announced that in order to further improve bilateral relations Hungary will raise the number of scholarships provided for Palestinian students to 50.

At the end of his Israel-Palestine trip, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary will lay a wreath at the tomb of Yasser Arafat, former President of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), and will later meet Mahmoud Abbas current President of State of Palestine and PNA.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade)