Economic cooperation, visa waivers for holders of diplomatic passports, scholarships and the situation in the Middle East involving Syrian refugees were on the agenda during Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s visit to Lebanon on Wednesday and Thursday.
A series of cooperation agreements on political and educational issues will be signed following the visit, Orbán said after talks with Lebanese President Michel Sleiman.
Lebanon’s Daily Star reported Orbán as saying Hungary could be a partner in energy and military training and cooperation, with Sleiman speaking of the importance of continuing to promote the exchange of expertise.
Orbán was accompanied by a 36-strong delegation of Hungarian business people who attended a forum.
Hungary considers Lebanon as one of the most important countries for the region’s stability and plans to include Lebanon’s strategic role in the agenda of the next meeting of European Union foreign ministers, state secretary for foreign affairs and foreign economy Péter Szijjártó said on Wednesday.
This is a step in the right direction for Hungary. There is an entire world out there beyond the borders of the European Union, that Hungary can be actively pursuing close economic cooperation with. We should not be limited by the European Union’s rules and regulations in the amount of goods we produce domestically. We should not fall for the sinister “advice” dictated by the EU that “there is already enough produced in the EU, we don’t need any more of that to be made in Hungary”. That was what we were led to believe in prior years that resulted in the closing of the dozen or so sugar producing plants. Today Hungary, as well as the EU is having to import sugar at a premium price. All the goods and agricultural products that could possibly be produced in Hungary could easily find markets outside of the EU to the east, the middle-east and Asia. Increasing the exports from Hungary in all areas is likely a strong strategy that could improve the GDP and lead to an improvement to the standard of living.