Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said Hungarians and Serbs have started building their future together, and they will both be the beneficiaries of that future.
During a ceremony marking the start of the upgrade of the Subotica-Szeged railway line, in northern Serbia, PM Orbán said the ceremony was in fact marking the groundbreaking symbolizing the cooperation between Hungary and Serbia. “We are stronger together,” PM Orbán said and called for closer bilateral ties. Concerning the railway line to be upgraded and reopened, PM Orbán said that “storms of history cut this line in two”, and it was eventually closed down. He suggested that it was a “typical central European story” with decisions “coming from a distant centre of an empire” leading to divisions and conflicts. “But now the time has come to take our fate into our own hands”, he said. PM Orbán also noted the upgrade of the Budapest-Belgrade railway line and said there were also plans to build a railway line between Baja and Subotica.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said Hungarians and Serbians were “not twice, but many times stronger together than on their own”. “A strong Serbia means a strong Hungary, and a strong Hungary means a strong Serbia, and that is in all of our interests,” he said.