Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó and Bulgarian Minister of Economy Bozhidar Lukarski signed a Hungarian-Bulgarian inter-governmental economic cooperation agreement on Thursday in Budapest.
According to the flash report of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH) published earlier this morning, in the first month of the year wages in real terms were up by 6.4 percent year-on-year. Thus, wages have been on the rise for more than 3 years and this is the best January growth figure in eleven years.
On Friday, Government Spokesperson Zoltán Kovács told public television channel M1 that, with approval in Brussels of an agreement on migration, Hungary may achieve its most important goal.
The online version of the German liberal weekly Die Zeit published an interview with Hungarian Minister of Human Capacities Zoltán Balog entitled Horrible humanitarian conditions on the horizon.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will engage in battle at the EU summit to be held in Brussels on Thursday and Friday against the mandatory resettlement quotas and in the interest of the introduction of voluntary quotas, János Lázár, the Minister heading the Prime Minister’s Office said.
On Thursday, before the Brussels summit of EU heads of state and government, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that the Hungarian government’s goal is to ensure that, within any prospective migration agreement, refugee exchanges or resettlement of any kind between the European Union and Turkey only occurs on a voluntary basis.
“The EU has lost some of its competitiveness in recent years and this is one of the reasons why the promotion and development of economic cooperation with its neighbours, including Belarus, is important, and this is something Hungary could also profit from”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said on Thursday in Budapest following a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart.
Representatives of Hungary and Turkey urged for cooperation between Hungarian and Turkish enterprises at the Hungarian-Turkish Business Forum on Thursday; they see especially good opportunities for joint action in Africa, where both countries wish to increase their presence.
At the Hungarian-Bulgarian Business Forum Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said that “Hungary is urging for Bulgaria to become a member of the Schengen Area as soon as possible, because it would also give further impetus to growth in Hungarian-Bulgarian trade flow”.
On Thursday at a press conference in Budapest, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said that the system of mandatory quotas is a failed concept, which instead of leading to a solution will only aggravate the migration crisis.