Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Press Statement following his Meeting with Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Massimov (3 June 2014, Budapest)

Good Afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome!

The first thing that I would like to recall with relation to our negotiations is that I have asked the Prime Minister to relay our good wishes and highest consideration to the President of Kazakhstan. One important point of our discussions was reviewing the state of the global economy. I am glad to have had the opportunity to negotiate with a partner whose opinions on the changes occurring around the world lie very close to what we, the Hungarians, think. In our view, the world in which we live is transforming radically and rapidly. This transformation can be most easily noticed with regard to the global economy. Every change has its winners and its losers, but we ourselves decide who will be a winner and who will end up a loser. Hungary is a country that would like to be one of the winners of these changes, and in our view the changes in the world economy are opening up excellent opportunities for talented countries and peoples. The old recipes partly or fully lose their validity at such times, and an innovative, rapid and courageous way of thinking represents an advantage. And according to some, not just an advantage, but also a risk. Our opinion, however, is that what represents the real risk is if we are not innovative, are not prepared to initiate and are not courageous enough; that is a greater risk that beginning to think in a novel manner.

You know that we have always held Kazakhstan in high esteem. We think the achievements that they have realised during the past ten-twenty years are fantastic. We believe that our guest today is the Prime Minister of one of the world’s most definitive countries. The weight and importance of Kazakhstan within the global economy and in global politics will continue to increase every year. I congratulated the Prime Minister on having succeed on establishing, together with Russia and Belarus, the huge economic area that will play an important role in the global economy during the upcoming two-three decades. Hungary views this as a positive development for the global economy. We would not like to miss out on this opportunity. Hungary has completed its task of Western integration. Western integration and Eastern opening together can make us successful. And this is why I have just signed this agreement with the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, because this agreement concerns strategic cooperation. It expresses our commitment to finding opportunities for cooperation that are mutually advantageous to both our countries. During the course of our discussions, we pinpointed several such areas, including agriculture, the energy sector, science and technology and the pharmaceutical industry. We also succeeded in recognising the fact that Kazakhstan is extremely capital-intensive and would gladly apply new technologies, while Hungary has world-class, new technologies in many fields, but we are not sufficiently capital-intensive. We will by trying to link these two characteristics during the upcoming years to establish a wide-ranging and strong Kazakh-Hungarian economic cooperation that promises considerable business advantages.

In closing, I would like to thank the Prime Minister not only for his kind visit, but also for having received us in Astana a few years ago, where were able to begin our own personal cooperation and where we also had the opportunity to launch cooperation between our two governments at the highest possible level. We are grateful for this and accordingly we highly appreciate the work of the Prime Minister. I wish the Kazakh-Hungarian Business Forum and the participants of the Joint Economic Committee much success, because we have completed our own personal task today. There is not much more that a politician can do. Every window and every door is now wide open, all obstacles have been removed, and it is now up to our businesspeople to see what they can achieve using the opportunities we have made available. I would like to stress that the Hungarian Government will continue to strongly support Hungarian enterprises that plan on realising economic cooperation with Kazakhstan in future.

Thank you for your kind attention.

(miniszterelnok.hu)