Serbia-Hungary relations "best in decades"

Serbia-Hungary relations "best in decades"

Speaking at a joint press conference in Belgrade, Dacic said that political good will had been shown by Belgrade and Budapest and Istvan Pasztor’s Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians had demonstrated a constructive approach, which was a big step forward in the normalization of relations between the two countries.

Dacic said that Szijjarto, who also serves as Hungarian foreign trade minister, was taking part in a meeting of the trilateral working group on China-Serbia-Hungary transport infrastructure cooperation that was discussing further steps in the Belgrade-Budapest railway modernization project.

“We hope that the railway will be extended to Greece and Montenegro,” said the Serbian foreign minister.

Dacic thanked Hungary for supporting Serbia in the European integration process and said that he would visit Budapest in February.

Szijjarto stressed that the two neighboring countries had never had better relations and pointed out that Serbia and Hungary were now having a record volume of trade.

He pointed out that trade exchange in 2013 had surpassed all records and was now more than EUR 1 billion.

In the first 10 months of 2014, we saw a 3.5 percent increase in trade, and I hope that we will be able to observe the same at the end of 2015, said the Hungarian foreign minister.

He announced that two institutions crucial to the Hungarian foreign trade - Exim Bank and the Hungarian National Trading House - would open offices in Belgrade soon.

Szijjarto said that the issue of supplying Central European countries with gas had become very important after the South Stream project had been cancelled.

Minister Dacic and I have agreed that we need to find a solution for a way out of this situation in order to resolve energy issues, he said.

Yesterday, before his visit to Belgrade, Szijjarto said that he expected negotiations with Serbia, Turkey, Greece and Macedonia, on possibly constructing a new gas pipeline to the countries of Central Europe, to be stepped up.

He stressed that Serbia could still count on Budapest supporting it in the process of getting closer to the EU, adding that the decision had been made to have former Hungarian permanent representative to Brussels on Serbia’s negotiating team.

Belgrade and Budapest want to make life easier to people and so we talked about opening more border crossings, said Dacic, and Szijjarto added that an old border crossing, Horgos-Reske, would be opened in the summer.