Following talks with his Czech counterpart Andrej Babiš in Ústi nad Labem on Wednesday, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said the next decade will offer central Europe "fantastic opportunities".
According to MTI, PM Orbán said that while central Europe had earlier been thought to be helpless without Western Europe, it was now the Western European economies that could not do without central Europe. “There is not even a successful German economy without central Europe, which is in fact the locomotive of the EU’s economy,” he said. The political and economic weight of the region will further increase, but it requires the Visegrad cooperation to continue, he said.
PM Orbán said that in terms of reducing unemployment, the Czech Republic “is one step ahead of us”, adding that Hungary also wanted to have a debt rate as slow as its northern neighbour. The prime minister said his visit today was aimed at strengthening the Czech-Hungarian axis of the Visegrad Four cooperation, arguing that without the Czech Republic’s commitment towards the V4 the group cannot function. “The Visegrad Group needs the strength and political influence of the Czech Republic,” PM Orbán said.