Foreign minister: we are maintaining the Hungarian-Romanian strategic partnership
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Hungary has a vested interest in maintaining the strategic partnership with Romania, which is key to avoiding recession, creating energy security and handling the “migrant wave”, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó told a press conference after talks with Bogdan Aurescu, his Romanian counterpart, in Budapest on Tuesday.
Noting that the two countries had signed a strategic partnership agreement 20 years ago, Szijjártó said: “There are always noisemakers who make a racket to seem to be in majority. But the aim of the two countries’ governments is to keep up the strategic partnership because that is in our nations’ interest,” he said.
The ethnic minorities living in each other’s countries are an asset in terms of bilateral relations, the ministry quoted Szijjártó as saying. Hungary has raised government support for the country’s Romanian minority sixfold and that of the Orthodox church sevenfold since 2010, Szijjártó said.
The strategic partnership is an asset in successfully tackling the current economic, energy and migration challenges, he said. “The European Union is currently barrelling towards recession”, the countering of which is helped by the “feat” of a record trade volume of around 10 billion euros reached between Hungary and Romania last year, Szijjártó said. Bilateral trade this year has grown further, by 29 percent, he said.
Romania is Hungary’s third most important exports market, with Hungarian oil and gas company Mol running 245 petrol stations and OTP Bank 97 branches in the neighbouring country. Pharmaceutical company Richter employs more than 600 people there, Szijjártó said.
Romania also has a key role in the diversification of Hungary’s gas supplies, and the annual capacity of the interconnector between the two countries has been expanded to 2.5 billion cubic metres, the foreign minister said. Further, there is a four-party agreement in the pipeline that will allow Hungary to import green electricity from Azerbaijan via Georgia and Romania, he added.