RMDSZ leader: Hungary-Romania ties ‘full of untapped potential’

Bilateral ties between Hungary and Romania are “full of untapped potential” that could include cross-border interregional cooperation, economic and energy cooperation as well as cooperation with the central European Visegrád Group, Hunor Kelemen, the head of Romania’s ethnic Hungarian RMDSZ party, told the Friday edition of the daily Magyar Nemzet.

Romania’s government should recognise that cooperation with Hungary would also benefit its own citizens, including Transylvanian Hungarians, Kelemen told the paper.

“We’ll be working to help this process along,” he said, adding that many of his “Romanian colleagues” and the Hungarian government were also open to improving bilateral cooperation.

He said the two countries should likely wait to hold a joint government session until they have a specific joint programme to announce.

Kelemen said it was doubtful that “this’ll happen from one month to the next”, noting that Hungarian-Romanian relations had often been tense in recent years.

The interests of RMDSZ and Transylvanian Hungarians have always lay in close cooperation between the Hungarian and Romanian governments “and our ability to play a connective role in that”, Kelemen said. “We can’t promise any miracles in this regard but what we can say is that the start of cooperation will improve trust.”

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Source: MTI