The foreign minister said leaders of large and powerful countries have a responsibility not to sever all ties between East and West and not to make it impossible to restore cooperation.
Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, told a meeting of the OECD in Paris that Hungary was a central European state with one of the most open economies in the world, and its government always supported free and fair global trade. Accordingly, Hungary’s economic strategy is based on mutual respect, avoiding discrimination against investment from any region, he said. “We have always supported free and fair global trading, unhindered by any barriers, the free flow of capital, and a free and fair competition for investment,” he said. The minister said it was an important goal that Hungary should be a meeting point for large companies from the East and the West, for instance in the car industry which is undergoing a transformation. “In Hungary, we have always believed in the importance of the willingness and ability for East-West cooperation,” he said. It would be the worst-case scenario for Hungary if two fully separated economic blocs were to develop once again, and the Cold War were to be restarted, with ties broken between East and West, Minister Szijjártó added. “We were victims of the Cold War and lost too much on it, so we do not want to lose more,” he said.