Péter Szijjártó
The government is doing everything in its power within the framework of its economic neutrality strategy to protect the Hungarian economy from the consequences of the European debacle caused by misguided decisions, said Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, on Monday in Budapest.
In his speech at the opening of the AFCA Financial Summit Forum 2025, the minister said that humanity is living in an age of danger, with wars and economic and social tensions becoming increasingly serious. He emphasized that the international conflicts and crises of the last decade all point in one direction, toward a new division of the world into blocs, which would be completely contrary to Hungary’s interests. He explained that for four decades, Hungary had been on the wrong side of a world divided into blocs, “we experienced what it is like to be oppressed by the East and forgotten by the West.”
FM Péter Szijjártó delivers a speech at the financial forum in Budapest. Photo: MTI/Robert Hegedüs
He added that, due to its geographical location and export-oriented economy, Hungary has an interest in global trade with as few barriers as possible. He also pointed out that the European Union’s deep decline shows that the community has fared very badly with an economic system based on blocs. He believed that the EU’s political power and competitiveness had reached a low point as a result of its “botched political and economic strategy” in recent years, and that the bloc’s international isolation was also increasing.
Let us recall the competition in Brussels over the past eight years: who can talk more rudely about Donald Trump?”
“For the sake of the next day’s media headlines, they made the most unintelligent comments about the American president (…) After that, it is not surprising that every normal-thinking European felt a sense of secondary shame when they saw the American president humiliating the President of the European Commission over a customs agreement.”
He also called it ridiculous to try to portray as a success the fact that the Americans had been paying 10% in tariffs and would now pay zero, while the Europeans would pay 15% instead of the previous 2-3%.
Ursula von der Leyen has reiterated that the agreement on tariffs between the EU and the US was a ‘conscious decision’ that avoided a trade war. https://t.co/1W8eF7NA0A
— euronews (@euronews) August 24, 2025
Péter Szijjártó also touched on the European Union’s “completely misguided” China strategy and criticized the community’s leaders for failing to see the enormous potential for civilized cooperation with the East Asian country.
“Instead of putting cooperation on a rational footing, they are politicizing and ideologizing it. (…) And we must recognize that cooperation with China is essential for the success of European companies in key sectors of the European economy,” he emphasized, citing Hungary as the best example of this, as an important meeting point for Eastern and Western companies. He stressed that bloc formation had destroyed the previous European growth model, and that the sanctions imposed due to the start of the war in Ukraine had shattered the system based on the combination of advanced Western technologies and Russian natural resources.
Xi Jinping to visit #Hungary and meets #Orban in early May RFE/RL learns https://t.co/wMgRSFcDXJ
— Ákos Keller-Alánt (@kelleralant) April 9, 2024
“The Hungarian economy is deeply integrated into the European economy, so it is very important that the government pursues an economic strategy in which we do everything we can to spare the Hungarian economy from the consequences of the European downturn. This is what we call economic neutrality,” he said.
We are not willing to choose between our eastern and western partners in terms of investments, trade relations and energy security. We work together with both our eastern and western partners,”
he added.
The minister noted that Hungary generally competes with Western European countries for the largest Chinese investments, which usually begin to criticize the presence of certain companies after they lose out. He also described the opening up to the East as a real success story, which has led to a roughly 60 percent increase in Hungary’s trade with the eastern half of the world, with China being the source of the most investments in 2020, 2023, and 2024.
Last year, 34 percent of Chinese investments in Europe came to Hungary, and the year before that, 44 percent,”
he emphasized.
“As far as our energy security is concerned, this is a hard physical issue that has nothing to do with politics or different ideologies. Hungary buys energy from wherever it is physically possible and financially viable. There is no external influence, no ideological pressure that would compel us to buy energy from more expensive or less reliable sources than we do now,” he warned. “And we interpret any attack on our energy security as an attack on our sovereignty, and in the event of such attacks, we do not consider war, which has nothing to do with us, to be a legitimate reason,” he concluded.
Via MTI; Featured photo: MTI/Hegedüs Róbert
The post We Will Not Choose Between East and West in Investments, Says Foreign Minister appeared first on Hungary Today.
