Hungarian foreign minister: EU can only be built on strong nation-states

The European Union can only be built on the foundation of strong nation-states, the Hungarian foreign minister said in Stockholm on Tuesday.

“The European Union’s report card hasn’t been the best in recent years,” Péter Szijjártó told a press conference following a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Visegrád Group (V4) and the Nordic Baltic Eight (NB8).

He noted that V4 and NB8 foreign ministers were meeting at a time when the EU was about to lose one of its member states for the first time. Transatlantic relations “are also languishing, although they are unbreakable”, Szijjártó said.

In addition to all this, he said, the EU is facing “serious challenges” while it is quickly losing competitiveness.

The V4 offer Europe “common sense policies” that promote low taxes coupled with a disciplined fiscal policy, Szijjártó said. But, he added, the most important task before the bloc was guaranteeing the safety of its citizens.