“There was no surprise at Wednesday’s vote on the UN Global Compact for Migration during the organisation’s plenary session in New York with relation to the fact that the adoption of the Compact was supported by the African, Asian, Latin-American and the Small Island countries, obviously because it conforms to their interests”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó declared in a statement to public media from New York following the vote.

“Not a single European politician was present at the preparative negotiations” over the past year, “Europe’s interests were hardly represented”. “Accordingly, the agreement is more of an African–Asian–Latin-American agreement than a global one, as the name would imply”, he stated.

He highlighted the fact that 9 of the European Union’s 28 member states did not vote in favour of the Compact. The Minister pointed out that while at the beginning of the process bureaucrats and politicians belonging to the European liberal mainstream said “Hungary is being eccentric again”, now one third of EU member states do not agree with the document.

“It is also clear that those who have voted no to the agreement are countries whose current leaders are placing the security of their own citizens first”, Mr. Szijjártó said. “Those who have voted to adopt the Compact must, however, take responsibility for contributing to the launching of new waves of migration”, he added.

He also stressed that since some one fifth of UN member states, 41 countries, did not vote in favour of the Compact, it can no longer be cited as mirroring the unanimous will of member states.

In reply to a question, Mr. Szijjártó reported on the fact that he had also held business meetings in New York on Wednesday. He pointed out that the roughly 1700 American enterprises operating in Hungary provide jobs to over 100 thousand people, the United States has become the second largest investor in Hungary after Germany, and the new investments arriving from America are maintaining their momentum.

He told the press that during the course of his current negotiations an agreement was successfully concluded with a major American IT services development and service company on the establishment of IT development bases in Budapest and Szeged, which will create over a hundred new jobs within the framework of an investment exceeding ten million euros. The Minister did not state the corporation’s name.

“American companies greatly contribute to the success of the Hungarian economy’s dimensional transition and to ensuring that Hungary is not only on the map of prospective investors as a production location, but also as a research and development location and an attractive destination for high added value investments”, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade stated.

(Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister/MTI)