The strategic partnership with Romania is also of great help in terms of avoiding economic recession, creating energy security and managing the flow of immigrants, Hungary is therefore interested in maintaining it, said Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó after receiving his Romanian counterpart in Budapest on Tuesday.

According to the ministry's statement, the head of the ministry reported at a joint press conference with Bogdan Aurescu that the agreement on strategic partnership was signed twenty years ago, which is in the interests of Romania, Hungary and the national communities living in each other's territory. "There are always counter-interests, there are always troublemakers who are so loud that it seems as if there are more of them than us. But the fact is that the current governments of the two countries have a clear and easily understandable and visible goal for everyone, which is to maintain this strategic partnership, quite simply because it is good for the two countries and the two nations" - he emphasized.

He stated that the government views each other's national communities as a resource in terms of bilateral relations.

He said that this is also proven by the fact that the budget support of the Romanian national minority in Hungary has increased sixfold since 2010, and the support of the Orthodox Church has increased sevenfold. Péter Szijjártó emphasized that this strategic partnership provides a particularly great help in successfully dealing with the three most significant challenges of today - economic, energy supply and migration. The first area is the economy, after the European Union is rushing towards a recession, which is an important weapon in avoiding that Hungarian-Romanian trade turnover reached about ten billion euros last year and thus set a record, and a 29 percent increase was registered this year as well, he pointed out.

He reminded that Romania is the third most important export market of the Hungarian economy, where several important Hungarian companies are constantly increasing their presence, such as Mol with 245 gas stations, OTP with 97 bank branches, and Richter with more than 600 employees. Regarding the security of the energy supply, the minister said that Romania has a significant role in the diversification of natural gas procurement, which is facilitated by the expansion of the capacity of the interconnector between the two countries from 1.75 billion to 2.5 billion cubic meters per year.

He added that the quadrilateral agreement will soon be signed, as a result of which our country will be able to import green electricity from Azerbaijan via Georgia and Romania.

According to the minister, the third area is the management of migration, for which it is extremely important that Romania does an excellent job in the field of border guarding and that cooperation is effective. Hungary has prevented 250,000 illegal border crossing attempts on the southern border so far this year, and if there was pressure from Romania, the authorities would not be able to concentrate on the southern border, he underlined.

"So these are three very important challenges we face today: avoiding economic recession, creating energy security and keeping migrants out. The strategic partnership with Romania helps in these three important issues, so we are clearly interested in maintaining this partnership," he concluded.

Source: Hír TV

Featured image: Tibor Illyés