FM Szijjártó: Nuclear energy faces discrimination and ideological attacks

Hungary is creating new energy links with neighboring states, Péter Szijjártó, the minister of foreign affairs and trade said in Athens on Friday, adding that the past period had shown that the more links there were, the more secure the respective countries involved were.

Energy supply in future would rely on producing large amounts of cheap and green electricity, and nuclear energy was indispensible to this aim, Szijjártó said at a meeting of a working group on strengthening energy connections in Central and South-Eastern Europe (CESEC).

Hopefully, central and south-eastern European countries would unite to combat “discrimination and ideological attacks against nuclear energy”, he added.

After the expansion of Hungary’s sole nuclear power station in Paks, nuclear capacity in Hungary would increase from 2,000 megawatts to 4,400 megawatts by the beginning of the next decade, the minister said.

The regional energy network, he said, must be expanded as soon as possible so as to maximise the benefits of mutual developments.

He referred to major infrastructure development projects which the government and several neighboring countries had agreed to. The capacity of the 400 kilovolt transmission line between Hungary and Serbia will be doubled, and construction of a new high-voltage connection between Hungary and Romania is in the planning phase, he noted.

Szijjártó said Hungary, Serbia and Slovenia had requested EU funding for a new central European regional electricity exchange, and agreements with the relevant companies have already been signed. It is planned that the system will be operational by the end of the first half of this year, he added.

Such projects, he added, not only served the interests of Serbian, Romanian, Hungarian and Slovenian citizens, but the interests of all European citizens too.

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