Central Europe expects Commission to conclude Brexit deal, says Hungarian foreign minister in UK

Central European countries expect the European Commission and other relevant EU institutions to make every effort to reach an agreement on the terms of Brexit, Péter Szijjártó, Hungary’s foreign minister, said on Sunday.

Britain’s exit from the European Union spells bad news for the bloc, Szijjarto said.

The minister attended an informal meeting of Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt and representatives of the Visegrad countries, as well as Slovenia, Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania in Chevening, in south-east England.

Szijjártó told MTI that

the CEE region expects the EU to reach a Brexit deal which both sides can acknowledge as fair.

Failure to reach such an agreement would seriously undermine the interests of Central Europe, he said, adding that the region’s trade volume with Britain is massive, while British investments in the region’s economies are intensive. Further, millions of central Europeans study in Britain, and their rights must be guaranteed.

He branded the performance of the European Commission over the past four and a half years as “scandalous”, insisting that it had caused the EU “very serious damage”.

Szijjártó said a once stable transatlantic relationship had become fragile. Moreover, the inability to respond to the migration crisis had been corrosive, he said. Next year, for the first time in the EU’s history, there will be a decrease in the number of member states, he added.