“The peace and development of the Western Balkans is also in Hungary’s national security and national economic interests, and accordingly Budapest is providing all possible assistance to the region’s countries, including to Albania within the field of European integration, and also in the fight against the novel coronavirus pandemic”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó emphasised in Tirana on Friday at a joint press conference with Albanian Foreign Minister Gent Cakaj.

“It is also in Hungary’s interests for European Union enlargement in the direction of the Western Balkans to accelerate, and accordingly we welcome the fact that the European Union is finally commencing accession negotiations with Albania”, Mr. Szijjártó added.

According to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the commencement of the negotiations is also a success for Hungary in view of the fact that “what the European Commission has not succeeded in doing over the past eleven years, the Hungarian Commissioner for Enlargement has succeeded in achieving in a few months”. “Budapest has drawn the attention of the European Commission to the fact that we should regain all the time we have wasted over the past eleven years in this regard by accelerating the accession negotiations, and (…) we should already hold the first round of talks during the course of this summer, because otherwise we will lose so much time that it will undermine the credibility of the integration process”, he said.

Mr. Szijjártó pointed out that the countries of Central Europe and the Western Balkans live in close interdependency, “and accordingly it is natural that if someone needs assistance or asks for help, then we will indeed assist them”.

“It is important that the defensive capabilities of the Western Balkan countries are not totally weakened, because then they will not be able to withstand a possible wave of illegal migration pressure”, he highlighted. “In the interests of reinforcing the country’s protective capacity, Hungary has donated a hundred thousand face masks and five thousand pieces of protective clothing to Albania”, he pointed out.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade underlined the fact that Hungary is now able to do so because it has imported over 62 million face masks from China, and there are currently four planes waiting to transport millions of masks to Hungary on Saturday. In addition, Budapest has also imported the equipment necessary for twenty million sets of protective equipment and clothing, meaning “The continuous supply of the equipment required for healthcare protection has been resolved in Hungary, as a result of which we are now in a position to also assist others”, he declared.

Since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pandemic, 518 infected persons have been registered in Albania, of whom 26 have died from complications associated with the disease, and 277 have recuperated from the COVID-19 infection.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade / MTI)