Following talks with Slovak Foreign Minister Ivan Korčok in Budapest, Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said cooperation between Hungary and Slovakia has never been this good.
According to MTI, the foreign minister said ties with Slovakia are of strategic importance, adding that he hoped the coming years would bring about an expansion of that cooperation and further success stories benefitting not only the two countries but their Hungarian and Slovak ethnic communities.
The minister noted that the Hungarian government had the cause of ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia “at its heart” and welcomed that the Slovak government had a similar approach. He appreciated the new Slovak government’s publishing its manifesto in Hungarian, too, and that the country was drafting a new law on ethnic minorities and their education.
Minister Szijjártó said that Slovakia is Hungary’s third largest trading partner, with annual trade exceeding 10.5 billion euros, while that country is also the third most important investment destination for Hungarian companies.
The minister said that a bridge spanning the River Danube between Komárom and Komarno will be completed before the end of this summer, and six new border crossings, including three bridges over the Ipoly river, will be opened before 2022. The electric grids of the two countries will be linked before the end of 2020, and the capacity of their gas interconnector significantly increased by 2024, he added.