Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said a key of the success of the Visegrad Group (V4) countries has been that they have based their economic and security policies on “common sense”.
In a video message to a joint V4 parliamentary committee meeting on Friday, the minister said the grouping comprising the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia is “the closest, most effective and most successful” alliance within the European Union today. In recent years the four countries have achieved results together that they could not have had on their own, he added. Minister Szijjártó highlighted the V4’s thwarting of the introduction of mandatory migrant quotas as the group’s biggest achievement. If Brussels’s “crazy proposal” had not been rejected, there would be tens or hundreds of thousands of migrants on the territory of the V4 countries today, he said.
Minister Szijjártó praised the V4 as an “extremely strong and competitive region”. This, he said, was demonstrated by the fact that if the grouping were a single state, it would be the third most populous EU country and the world’s 15th largest economy. One of the main reasons for the region’s success is the use of “common sense” in economic and security policy, he said. The minister praised the advantages of low tax rates when it comes to attracting international investment and job creation.
Photo credit: Facebook/Szijjártó Péter