Orbán: Hungary to build strategic partnership with Vietnam

Hungary and Vietnam will elevate their ties to the level of strategic partnership, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Monday following talks with Nguyen Phu Trong, the head of Vietnam’s Communist Party.

At a joint press conference after the meeting, Orbán called Vietnam a leading country in the Far East, and said that Vietnam’s example has proven that “a country can be — and perhaps can only be — successful if it builds a social, political and economic system which most fits its own culture”.

Orbán said that the world’s largest countries are striving to build an alliance with Vietnam and “there are more and more of us that are interested in Vietnam’s success“, Orbán said, and added that Hungary was interested in an early conclusion of free trade talks between Vietnam and the European Union.

Orbán noted that Hungary had launched a 500 million loan programme in 2016, and said that the scheme could be instrumental in “building a modern Vietnam in such areas as health, education, water supplies or farming”.