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Honourable Presidents, Dear Host, Dear Colleagues,
First of all, allow me to thank President Japarov for the invitation to be here and for your legendary Kyrgyz hospitality. I would also like to thank you for the opportunity to take part in an official state meeting. It is a pleasure to be here with you again – particularly here in Kyrgyzstan, because it was here six years ago that we joined the Organization of Turkic States as observers. I was here six years ago, I can compare the situation then with the situation now, and I can see the great progress that Kyrgyzstan has made in recent years under President Japarov. My heartfelt congratulations to the President!
Allow me the pleasure of informing the Presidents that last year, for the first time, Hungary’s trade turnover with Turkic countries exceeded 5 billion US dollars. Last year, for the first time, more than 5,000 students from your countries applied for university scholarships in Hungary. This year you have made a greater contribution than ever to the security of our energy supply. We Hungarians became the first non-neighbouring country to receive natural gas from Türkiye, the first delivery of natural gas from Azerbaijan arrived in Hungary, and the Hungarian oil company started production in the field it operates in Kazakhstan. I would like to thank all of you for this. I would like to inform the Presidents that we have started making the contribution to the Turkic Investment Fund that we committed to – i.e. 100 million US dollars. We hope that we will welcome ever more investments in Hungary from Turkic companies, and that increasing numbers of us will participate in your economic growth. I would like to inform you that at the last summit we decided to establish the Drought Prevention Institute in the Organization of Turkic States’ European headquarters in Budapest, where our experts will work together to find answers to environmental challenges. The Institute has started to implement its first major programme. This is a cooperative project between Hungarian, Kyrgyz and Uzbek universities to work on afforestation in the Fergana Valley.
Honourable Presidents,
Allow me to also briefly update you on the current situation in Europe. Today there are two dominant debates in the European Union. One is about the war that has been in progress for almost one thousand days, and the other is about Europe’s competitiveness, which is sinking ever deeper.
As far as the European debate on the war is concerned, I would like to inform you that there is still a massive pro-war majority in the European Union, even though we know that all military experts believe that on the battlefield the European strategy has already been defeated. Hungary took over the rotating Presidency of the European Union in July, and I launched a peace mission. I am grateful to President Erdoğan for helping me in my work. So much has been achieved that discussions have started in Europe on how to change the war strategy into a peace strategy. As we all know, in America last night – this morning – there was a Republican victory. This presents us European leaders with the question of whether Europe alone will be able to maintain the level of military and financial support it has been providing to Ukraine. There are serious doubts about this, and a new European strategy will be needed. The first steps towards this can be taken tomorrow in Budapest, where we are hosting a summit of European leaders. With forty-seven heads of state and government in attendance, this will be the biggest diplomatic event in our country’s history. President Erdoğan will be honouring us with his attendance. The most difficult question we have to deal with is the fate of the 50-billion-euro loan for Ukraine, which was decided earlier by the G7, and which is to be jointly financed by the European Union and the United States.
I would also like to inform the Presidents that the new European Commission will be formed in a few days’ time. There were elections in June, and they want to have the new Commission in place by 1 December. I do not think that we can expect any substantial change in Brussels’ attitude to the Turkic world. I think that we should be prepared for a continuation of its arm’s-length approach. But I would urge the Presidents to be as active as possible in our policy towards Brussels, and on every important issue to make your voices heard there. Hungary undertakes to represent these issues in European political and economic debates, and we will support all initiatives that strengthen cooperation between Europe and the Turkic world.
Finally, the other big debate underway in the EU today is concerned with competitiveness. The European economies’ competitiveness indicators are dramatically deteriorating, so the Hungarian Presidency has prepared a competitiveness pact. This will be discussed in Budapest the day after tomorrow and, if successful, will be adopted. This competitiveness pact we have drawn up contains economic measures that would give a strong boost to the development of the European economy. We hope that we will succeed.
I remind the Presidents that we look forward with great respect to seeing you in Budapest in the first half of next year at the forthcoming informal summit. We will be honoured to host you.
Thank you for your attention.
