Szijjarto to hold talks with US business executives in Boston

The development of the economy requires a stable foundation, which the government started working on back in 2010 before going on to attract record investments each year, Szijjarto said ahead of talks with US business leaders.

This has allowed Hungary to become an important production centre in Europe’s most important industries such as the auto industry, the electronics sector and the chemicals and food industries, Szijjarto said. This was followed by a rise in high value-added services, and is set to be topped off with R+D, he added.

Szijjarto said he was scheduled to meet executives of IT and pharmaceutical companies in Boston, whose investments in Hungary would contribute to a “qualitative leap” in the country’s economy.

He said that over the past years, the focus had been on “quantitative leaps”, but with full employment having been realised and with the country on a growth path and having become a meeting point for Eastern and Western companies, it was time to focus on quality.

Meanwhile, Szijjarto said he is scheduled to take part in a panel discussion on the future of Europe at Harvard University.

He said he will talks about Europe’s declining influence, prestige and competitiveness “given that it was incapable of isolating a war, and has instead practically globalised it and . made it even more severe with weapons deliveries”.

“The European Union was also incapable of protecting its own citizens from mass illegal migration waves, and is instead continuously encouraging these migration waves,” the minister said. “Neither was the European Union capable of improving its own competitiveness.”

He said this was because the EU’s current leadership and many of the powerful European member states had given up their own will and had become “followers”. “Their actions practically follow the guidelines, decisions and expectations of the Democrat administration in Washington,” Szijjarto said.

“It’s clear that the pressure from Washington achieves its goal in many European capital . as well as in Brussels,” he added.

He said the EU had to return to strategic autonomy and to acting in its own interests if it was to go back to being a “serious global economic and global political player”.

Hungary had demonstrated this over the last decade and a half, the foreign minister said, arguing that the country had successfully pursued a policy based on the enforcement of its own national interests despite “all the progressive pressure and instructions from the liberal mainstream”.