30 January 2018, Vienna

During the course of an official foreign visit it is very rare for us to hold two press conferences in one day, and this is not something that we will be making a practice of. But our visit to Vienna today is a special case, because Austria has a coalition government, and the issues of security and infrastructure development – the two joint issues which most affect Hungarians, the two most important issues relating to Austrian-Hungarian relations – happen to be assigned to the smaller coalition partner, the Freedom Party of Austria. And accordingly I would particularly like to highlight today’s meeting, underlining and reinforcing Hungary’s aim to maintain friendly relations with everyone with whom we may have common goals. We strive for friendly cooperation with everyone who can help protect Hungary. In recent years we have learned that Austria and Hungary can and must be protected together. We are grateful to Austria for having helped us in this, and through closing the Balkan migration route we have also acted to protect not only ourselves, but also Austria. This will not change in the future. We must jointly guarantee the security of Austria and Hungary, and accordingly in the period ahead I shall strive to ensure the closest, most professional and friendliest possible relations between the Austrian governments’ ministers for security and their opposite numbers in the Hungarian government, to assure that we can act in unison if the need arises. So our aim is for the ministers from the Freedom Party and the Hungarian government to maintain especially strong relations. As far as infrastructure goes, we are glad that in Austria today there is a dominant trend in favour of developing infrastructure. This is good news for Hungary. We think that there are many unexploited opportunities available to us. We have an interest in establishing both road and rail transport links. I am convinced that both Austrian-Hungarian economic cooperation and the friendship between our two peoples justify the establishment of these links. We discussed these during today’s meeting, and agreed that in the days and weeks ahead our ministers for both security and infrastructure will be holding bilateral talks. I would like to thank Party Chairman Strache for the opportunity to hold talks with him today.

Congratulations on your party’s election success, and I wish both you and Austria further success.

(miniszterelnok.hu)