“The countries of Central Europe are the clear winners of the new world order that has developed as a result of global economic and global political changes”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó emphasised on Wednesday in Ljubljana at the business forum held on the sidelines of the summit of heads of state of the Three Seas Initiative, which includes the 12 countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

“All this was not given free, and required the bringing of major and extremely serious decisions”, he added. “The rational political decisions that we have made in Central Europe with relation to the economy and security have all contributed to enabling Central Europe to be among the winners of the new world order today, and it fact the region represents the engine of European growth and competitiveness and will continue to do so in future”, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade emphasised. He highlighted the fact that last year the rate of economic growth of the countries of Central Europe was double the average European rate of growth, and four out of the five most rapidly growing economies in the first quarter of this year were also from Central Europe. “This is obviously thanks to the fact that we have placed our security in first place, in addition to which the lowest taxes in Europe can also be found here in this region”, he added.

As he explained, there are certain competitive disadvantages that need to be overcome, because if we do not do so then the economic engine could quickly become a thing of the past. According to the Minister, we must primarily concentrate on transport and energy issues. He explained that while in Western Europe borders can be legally crossed every two or three kilometres, in Central Europe a border crossing station can only be found on average every 40 kilometres, which is obviously detrimental to competitiveness. This is one of the reasons why Hungary has come to an agreement with neighbouring countries on significantly increasing the number of road and rail border crossing points, he highlighted.

“Hungary has done its homework in the interests of being able to purchase natural gas that does not come for a Russian source”, Mr. Szijjártó said, adding that Hungary’s pipelines in the direction of Romania and Croatia are also complete. “Given that, from now on it depends only on our friends and allies whether we will be able to purchase gas from a non-Russian source. It depends exclusively on the Croatians, the Romanians, and on the Americans and Austrians who have acquired the right to extract natural gas there”, Mr. Szijjártó said. “If they don’t ‘do their homework’, Hungary will be forced to cooperate with the Russians in the long term within the field of gas purchasing”, he added.

(MTI)