We must build a strong Europe, with strong leadership, Szabolcs Takács, State Secretary for EU Affairs at the Prime Minister’s Office told the Hungarian news agency MTI on Tuesday after he attended the new series of Hungarian-organised conferences concerned with the European Union in Budapest.

The State Secretary said: the series of conferences now launched is organised by the State Secretariat for EU Affairs at the Prime Minister’s Office and the Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade in order to enable foreign and Hungarian lecturers researching the present and future of the European Union to share their thoughts on the topic. The mini-conferences will be held with monthly regularity, he added.

Experts have an opportunity to share their views on the role of the Central-European region in the future of the EU, and also introduce the debates on the topic which are ongoing in the different countries. The main topic of the first part of the series is Brexit, the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union, in the context of which the State Secretary remarked that they primarily concentrate on the positive scenarios which expect both Britain and the EU to come out of the separation process stronger.

„We have a vested interest in a strong European Union which will function in the widest possible cooperation with the United Kingdom even after the British exit from the EU”, he stressed. He added that at the same time they expect the United Kingdom to continue to form a part of Europe as it is not separating from the continent, but from the EU.

The conference was attended, inter alia, by Iain Lindsay, Ambassador of the United Kingdom to Budapest, and Rastislav Kácer, Ambassador of Slovakia to Budapest.

(MTI)