“We must finally cut the hysteria and overflowing emotions out of European-American trade disputes; the European Union made a major mistake when it incited hysteria in relations following the election of president Donald Trump”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said.

The Minister, who is attending an informal meeting of EU foreign and economy ministers in Innsbruck, said the main topic of discussion at the forum was relations between the EU and the United States.

According to Mr. Szijjártó, the EU spent too much time criticising the U.S. President following his election, instead of beginning to develop cooperation.

“The EU must not make the same mistake again, but must do cut the hysteria and overflowing emotions out of European-American trade disputes, and must begin solving this dispute in the spirit of mutual respect, because if there is no agreement it could cause major damage to the European economy, and within it to the economies of member states. Accordingly, we must avoid the further escalation of the situation”, Mr Szijjártó said.

Three issues are important to Hungary with relation to resolving the European-American trade dispute. According to the Minister, it is extremely important that there should be no investment restriction, because the United States is now the second largest investor in Hungary: the 1700 U.S. companies operating here provide jobs to some 105 thousand Hungarians. “For this reason, it is in Budapest’s interests for no investment restrictions to some into force”, Mr. Szijjártó added.

The other issue is that we must protect the trade freedom of the automotive industry: no restrictions should complicate cooperation between the European and American automotive industries.

“This is in our interests, because the performance of the Automotive industry in Hungary now exceeds 9000 billion forints, 92 percent of our products go to export, and a significant proportion of them to the USA”, he said.

The third factor is that the standard of agricultural and food safety regulations must remain high during the resolving of the EU-USA trade dispute. The fact that Hungary has extremely high standards within the field of food safety must be respected, as well as the fact that the country’s GMO-free status is also set down in the Constitution, which must be considered no matter what.

“There must be no investment restriction, we must protect the freedom of automotive industry trading, and we must protect the standard of agricultural and food safety regulations”, the Minister said in summary.

On the sidelines of the Innsbruck meeting, Mr. Szijjártó held talks with the Romanian, Austrian and German economy ministers, and discussed the simplification of regulations that affect the operations of the European automotive industry.

(Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister/MTI)