“Serbia is Hungary’s number one partner in the Western Balkans”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó told public media reporters in Niš on Sunday prior to the Hungarian-Serbian joint cabinet meeting.

We would like to primarily draw attention to three things during the two-day inter-governmental summit that begins today, and first and foremost to the fact that trade, economic, cultural and especially political relations between Hungary and Serbia “have never been as good, efficient and balanced as they are today”, the Minister told reporters.

“Both governments and both Prime Ministers have done much to assure that these relations can now be characterised by harmonious cooperation instead of the previous tensions”, he stressed.

“We would also like to make it clear that Hungary is a committed supporter of European Union expansion in the Western Balkans”, he explained. “We cannot understand why the President of the European Commission recently declared that there will be no expansion within the next five years”, he said. “We would like to see the further expansion of the European Union within the next five years and believe Serbia has the best chance of becoming the next member of the EU”, he added.

Mr. Szijjártó said that in his opinion if everyone in the Carpathian Basin had done half as much for Hungarian minority communities as Serbia, then the Carpathian Basin would be “a much happier place” today. “This is why we cannot understand, and in fact reject the fact that EU member states are attempting to slow Serbia’s integration process on the grounds that they expect the country to introduce further measures with regard to minority affairs”, he pointed out.

The Hungarian Foreign Minister also mentioned that the negotiations were also significant from an economic perspective, because Serbia is one of Hungary’s important trade partners.

MOL, OTP and Richter all regard Serbia as an important target market, in addition to which the Hungarian Government has launched an economic development programme in Vojvodina, including 20 billion forints (EUR 65M) in non-refundable loans and 30 billion forints (EUR 97M) in preferential, low-interest loans, the most important goal of which is to improve the in situ situation of the Hungarian community living there and to further tighten economic cooperation between the two countries.

Bertalan Havasi, the Prime Minister’s Press Chief, had previously informed the press that in addition to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán almost every single minister of the Hungarian Government would also be participating in the Serbian negotiations to be held during the summit’s joint plenary session and bilateral meetings between individual Hungarian and Serbian ministers.

(Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister/MTI)