This German province is a crucial investment and trade partner for Hungary

Judit Varga, the head of parliament’s European affairs committee, had talks with political and economic leaders of North Rhine-Westphalia on Friday.

The German province is “a crucial investment and trade partner” for Hungary, Varga told MTI after the talks. She said economic ties were good but needed to be further developed. She added that preserving and developing German-Hungarian and North Rhine-Westphalian-Hungarian ties would fit in the priorities of Hungary’s upcoming European Union presidency.

Varga met Stefan Engstfeld, her counterpart in the province’s parliament, and other local officials.

During her talks, Varga discussed “practical areas where the EU could have a better performance and where it could set more rationalistic goals for the industry, which could be met and which are not ideologically motivated,” she said. The talks touched upon the EU’s general economic state, priorities of the Hungarian presidency and the European parliamentary elections.

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Varga noted Europe’s “crisis signals” including protests by farmers “demonstrating that German and French citizens have realised that the Brussels elite neglects their problems,” which she said “should be remedied through the EP elections”.

Concerning media reports suggesting that the EU could strip Hungary of its voting rights, Varga said “the EU treaties guarantee Hungary the right for a different opinion in certain areas such as foreign policy”. “Unless we promote the majority position, we are threatened by fund cuts and the stripping of our voting rights . this is a kind of cancel culture in the Brussels administration, which we want to change by all means,” she said.

In the upcoming election “redirect Europe to the path of rationality and restoring consensus in decision making will be on one side, and witch hunts, rule of law procedures, and blackmailing countries of a different opinion on the other,” she insisted.