Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, received this year's Sándor Wekerle Carpathian Basin Economic Award of the Hungarian National Bank (MNB) on Thursday.

According to the announcement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Central Bank Governor György Matolcsy stated at the ceremony: the award can be given to a leader with excellent performance who simultaneously does a lot for the Carpathian Basin, also within the cooperation of the Visegrád Four, so that it can create a "knowledge region". "After all, our future is for the entire Carpathian Basin economic space to be built on a unified knowledge base, " he said.

In his acceptance speech, Péter Szijjártó emphasized that his friendship with György Matolcsy goes back to 2010, a "quite stormy period" when Hungary was "on the edge of ruin, and even one step over it". According to him, "brave, unorthodox" measures and a turnaround in economic policy were necessary, all of which made it possible for Hungary to become one of the most dynamically developing economies in the European Union, even though "ten or eleven years ago we were still sitting on the bench". As he said, he is especially grateful for receiving the award for something he loves to do.

The minister emphasized: he cannot imagine a more beautiful or uplifting task than representing the Hungarian nation . At the same time, the head of the ministry stated that the award does not belong to him personally, but to the government's national-based approach to foreign policy.

"This is aimed at validating the national interest, it is pragmatic, as it sets economic goals for itself, wants to gather friends, but at the same time does not allow anyone to have fun with a thousand-year-old nation," he said. He believed that Central Europe and the Carpathian Basin were the focus and at the same time the most successful area of ​​Hungarian foreign policy.

Hungary was able to improve its relations with all neighboring countries except Ukraine, and the situation of the Hungarian communities across the border is also better. He also touched on the strengthening and increasing competitiveness of the Central European region, and reported that the value of trade with neighboring states was roughly 40 billion euros last year. This represents a fifth of Hungary's total trade turnover, a 56 percent increase in ten years, and about eight times the volume of Hungarian-American trade.

Finally, he touched on the relationship system of the Visegrád Four, according to him, this is the closest alliance of the EU, which, if it were a state, would be a member of the G20 group of countries. He described it as a great success that the V4 jointly managed to prevent the introduction of mandatory EU resettlement quotas , otherwise tens or hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants could live in Central Europe today.

Source: MTI

(Caption photo: Facebook/Péter Szijjártó)