Deputy State Secretary Gergely Prőhle paid a visit to North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and held talks with Angelica Schwall-Düren, a Minister of the provincial government of North Rhine-Westphalia, also responsible for European Affairs, on April 29.

Gergely Prőhle and Angelica Schwall-Düren, as fellow presidents of the Joint Committee of Hungary and North Rhine-Westphalia, agreed that the third session of the Joint Committee would be held in Düsseldorf in 2014. They stressed that cooperation between Hungary and North Rhine-Westphalia had been most successful in the areas of car manufacturing, higher education and crime prevention, while they asserted that further opportunities could be exploited within the fields of Roma integration and the education of journalists.  

At their meeting, they also discussed Hungary’s reputation in Germany and within the European Union. Deputy State Secretary Gergely Prőhle emphasized that Hungary regarded Germany as a strategic partner and that is why the first foreign visit of Minister for National Economy Mihály Varga was to Berlin. The Hungarian Deputy State Secretary asked Angelica Schwall-Düren to use her influence as a social democrat with regard to the debate on Hungarian democracy in the German press because false information had often appeared in many of the articles. He added that Hungary definitely wanted to avoid Hungarian-German relations becoming an issue of political debate during the campaigns for the upcoming German parliamentary elections. In her response, Angelica Schwall-Düren underlined that reliability and calculability were the most important factors from the aspect of both political and economic operators, and they were indispensable for Hungary if it wanted to preserve or increase its favourable reputation and status as an excellent investment destination.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs)