Minister: the Budapest-Belgrade railway will have been renewed by 2025!
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Serbia’s Hungarian minority has “demonstrated that their mother country can count on them”, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in Subotica (Szabadka) on Tuesday, citing “record” turnout at the polls in Hungary’s recent general election.
“We promise they can also rely on us in the coming period,” the minister said. Szijjártó noted that the 60,900 votes cast in Subotica on April 3 were one and a half times as many as in the previous election in 2018.
“Vojvodina Hungarians have helped to ensure that Hungary’s national government can carry on,”
he said. He asked Serbian Hungarians for their support, adding that this would contribute to “the friendship between Hungarians and Serbs based on a historic reconciliation, which the Hungarian community of Vojvodina benefits most”.
Concerning the election, Szijjártó welcomed that “no party alliance in the history of Hungarian democracy has ever received as many votes as we have — over 3 million votes — and we have never had as many deputies in parliament as we are going to have.” He noted that the recent election had also seen the highest number of votes from Hungarians abroad so far.
The vote was of “historic significance” because voters “had to make their choice between peace, security and being dragged into the war”,
he said, adding that voters were clearly anti-war.
Szijjártó said the government valued “every member of the Hungarian nation” voting in the election, adding that “the left would strip Hungarians across the border of that right”. The Hungarian government will go on with its economic promotion programme in Vojvodina, the minister said, adding that the scheme had so far facilitated investment projects worth a combined 167 billion forints in that province.
Answering a question, he said strategic projects under way would be continued. The Budapest-Belgrade railway will have been renewed by 2025, and the line linking Subotica and Szeged, in southern Hungary, will be opened before the end of this year, he said, adding that the Budapest-Belgrade line’s significance would increase in light of the war in Ukraine because “goods from Greek ports could reach Western Europe via that route”.
“goods from Greek ports could reach Western Europe via that route”. ‘Could’ is the operative word but can’t is more accurate because there is no rail link to the port of Piraeus from this white elephant line and the Greeks have not signed up to one.