Minister János Martonyi’s Lecture at the Centre for European Studies at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand May 1, 2012.

Excellences,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Colleagues and Friends,

I would like to say thank you for this invitation. It is an honour and pleasure to have this opportunity. Before I start my lecture, let me just express how much I am impressed by everything I have seen in this country in a very short time that I stay here. I am also very impressed by this university, the fascinating campus and the whole atmosphere that have given me a comfortable feeling when we entered this magnificent building. This conveys the message to me that universities across the world are very similar. They have the same mission, the same function, the same values, and I also hope that they are getting closer and closer to one another in every aspect.

Let me start from a global perspective, before I come to my country and also our cooperation with Thailand.

Starting with a macro-perspective, I think we all agree that the world has been changing rapidly, especially in recent times. It is not a new phenomenon, but we all agree that it’s now accelerating in this regard. If you look back what the word looked like just 21-22 years ago, many of us spent substantial part of our live in a bipolar world that was basically divided into two superpowers competing with each other and dominating their part of the world. My country has a very peculiar memory of that period. In that system, in fact, Hungary lost the great number of the countries of the region. It all comes down to the question of national independence and sovereignty. Formally, we were an independent and sovereign country, but as you know very well Hungary was dominated by the so called ‘Soviet Empire’. Now all that change, abruptly or not abruptly, is another question. Whether this was to be foreseen or not is also another question. According to some experts’ forecasts the date of the implosion of Soviet Empire should have been in 1984. Actually, it didn’t happen at that time, but a couple of years later. A very short period of time afterwards, a kind of unipolar world emerged but it didn’t last long. In fact, it has never been complete, but very soon we all realized that what’s emerging out of all these changes and shifts is rather what we call a multipolar world. How many poles are there, we cannot even say. We tried to set up informal international structures and, as a reflection of our hesitation regarding the number of dominant poles; we are speaking about the formation of G2, G7, G8, and G20.

In many cases, the world is already complex. It is often said although we don’t know how many poles we have. We know very well some poles are more important than others. However, in reality no one can fully impose its own will upon the others. This shows the complexity of the present world. At the same time, it is not only multipolar, but it’s also diverse and heterogeneous in terms of culture, religion and ideology, which all add to the complexity of the picture. At the same time, the world is getting more and more global because on the one hand there are global challenges, global risks. We do not know actually what global risks are, whether they are manmade, whether they are caused by nature, whether they are the result of both factors like climate change. But these are risks and challenges that are threatening the whole mankind.

The above mentioned facts are reflecting the negative connotation of the globalised world.  It is obvious, however, that there are also positive results that we do not refer to that often. So we do not only have global risks and challenges but also a global heritage, a universal heritage, universal values, and universal explanation. All these positive and negative factors bring us together. One consequence of this global risk is that there is global independence among different parts, different regions, different continents, different countries and nations of the world. Anything that happens anywhere has an immediate and often direct impact upon all the others. Another factor is the ever-changing character of the world. It is changing very fast. We talked a lot about that but we acted much less about that. We talked a lot about the economic shift that is now taking place in many countries, especially in Asia. But we do not know how we can draw the conclusion or perhaps sometimes we draw the conclusions a little bit slowly. We have been discussing for years what kind of foreign forums should be introduced, but the reality is that no forum has been introduced yet. Despite all the negotiations that have been conducted on this issue, we are not changing our thinking fast enough.

My last point about the world is that the world is not only multipolar, diverse, interdependent and rapidly changing, but it is also unpredictable. That’s of course connecting to other factors like globalization, rapid changes, and interdependence and so on. Unpredictability is always there. The Greek, we know it very well that the Gods (they say) are wise enough to hide the future from us which is very true, but this time unpredictability has immediate consequences upon ourselves.

How could the global financial and economic crisis have been foreseen? To answer this question, experts and politicians published a number of essays in which they forecast something similar that is true of course. Many people have been talking about such a possibility but no one could precisely forecast what and when is exactly going to happen. This also signifies that we’re living in the world of uncertainty.  The best reaction to this uncertainty is if we try to be certain of ourselves, of what we want to do, the objectives we want to follow and the policy we want to develop, the values we want to accept and implement and the cooperation we want to conduct with our people and nation.

While we recognize the unpredictability, especially in case of few nations at the same time, we have to see that the future is not only unpredictable, but it is also freedom. We construct our future in a way. That’s the responsibility we all have, whether we’re living in the East, in the West, in the North or in the South, whether we are politicians or ordinary people. We all share this responsibility that the future is being and will be constructed together, by all of us.

About Hungary

Next I will come back and talk about today’s topic, Hungary. This is the country of long history. Even if I take only the relations between Hungary and Thailand, I have to go back at least 140 years. We had a very nice and friendly commemoration yesterday afternoon when we celebrated the 140th anniversary of the ratification of the Treaty of Friendship, Trade and Navigation between Siam and the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. At the very same time, we are celebrating the100th anniversary of the establishment of our Legation in Hotel Oriental Bangkok.

That is going back one and a half century. But it now goes on and in the meantime we have quite a difficult period when we lost our national independence. We were invaded by Germany and the Red Army in 1944-45. And we have a fairly long period of domination. I wouldn’t call it colonization because it wasn’t that. We were just politically integrated into an empire, and we were also obliged to take over social and economic systems. That superpower believed that it was its right for the future. On the contrary, it turned out to be a huge mistake, so at the end of 1989-1990 the whole system had to be changed. It was changed rather rapidly, in the countries of our region. That also brought with the complete reversal and renewal of a foreign policy as well. We set up a couple of basic priorities and goals for ourselves in the year 1990 when the first democratically elected government took over the power. At that time, we said it was simple.

First and foremost, we have to go back where we belong to, which basically means Europe, the Atlantic family, the Atlantic Alliance and the West. That’s the normal way to go back to Europe. That was our slogan and that was we are doing in our country. This well expressed that we wanted to become integrated and become a member of the European and Atlantic Integration Structure. That was point no.1.

Point no.2 was our foreign policy which is “let’s try to establish and re-establish regional cooperation, let’s develop a very strong regional policy. We may coordinate with our neighbours but ‘neighbourhood’ here has to be taken in a wider sense not just the direct neighbours but other countries as well.” We realized that this is the key factor in any country’s success or failure in the field of international or foreign relations. I am less aware of any other country’s foreign policy as a main slogan of zero conflict with the neighbours.

I would just like to refer back to what I said about uncertainty and unpredictability of the world. In such a world, you definitely need good neighbours, because when trouble comes, they are primarily the neighbours who could be helpful and with whom you could cooperate whether it’s natural disaster or political upheaval or anything else.

Point no.3 is that Hungary is a country with a very special situation.  About 1/3 of Hungarians do not live in the current territory of Hungary, but in other neighbouring countries. Of course, this also had an influence on our foreign relations and policies and we are still keen on successfully combining neighbourhood policy and regional cooperation. Different forms and mechanisms have been developed in the last 20 years. Maybe the most famous is the so-called the Visegrad Four cooperation that was established in 1991. Actually, we celebrated the 20th anniversary a couple of months ago.

The Group of Visegrad has been consisted of three countries: Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Then Czechoslovakia separated, so now we are four. That’s why we call it V4; Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. But this is not the exclusive form of Central European cooperation. We also have a very close friendship with Austria.  For instance, last year we had the common conference for all the Austrian and Hungarian ambassadors who serve all over the world. In that way, they all summoned at the same place, to the lovely abbey, Pannonhalma. If you come to Hungary, you have to visit this abbey. That was the place where all the 150 -160 ambassadors met. Speeches were delivered by both Austrians and Hungarians. We also invited Italians just to express our friendship with them. But these things are now becoming our routine exercise. We have a good relationship practically with all our neighbours. Although some people have a false perception of that, they always try to pinpoint, try to find the possible conflict, disputes, or tensions. So we are very sorry to disappoint these people, since there are no serious conflicts and tensions.

From time to time it is inevitable to have some issues on which we disagree. But anyone who thinks that these countries might have a serious dispute among themselves is making a terrible mistake, because cooperation is now developing with every country. We have the best possible relation with Romania, Serbia, and Croatia. This is an emerging regional policy which is getting stronger and stronger. One of the main priorities of my government was to enhance this regional dimension, this so-called Central European dimension of our foreign policy.

But in the last 20 years, as I said, the world changed a lot and it is changing constantly. Another extremely important conclusion we had to draw 2 years ago when the present Hungarian government came back was that we have to adapt our foreign policy to these tremendous changes. That’s the way we develop the new concept of global opening.  Let’s open much more to the rest of the world. We achieved what we wanted. We became members of the European Union in 2004. We became a member of the NATO in 1999. We are now a respected member of all these integration schemes. We developed an extremely successful regional policy, friendship and cooperation with all direct and indirect neighbours. So what are we up-to now? Now we have to go beyond and understand what I tried to underline at the beginning that the world has become not only multiple and diverse, but it has also become interdependent. Anything that happens anywhere might have and will have impact upon us. That’s why we developed and we are still developing this policy of global opening.

It has of course a couple of natural consequences or implications. We have to develop special cooperation schemes with countries outside the Atlantic framework. We have to find ways and means for cooperation. At the same time, we have to pay much more attention to all the multilateral structures whether this is the UN,   trade, finances or anything else including environment, health, energy and water. We have to pay much more affinity towards all these issues with respect to substance and with respect to the international frameworks. At the same time, we have to act more globally. We have to understand that we are responsible for all these.

It also involves a very important issue, i.e.  Hungarians are special people, not better than anyone else, but in Europe perhaps we are the only ones who come from the East. Due to the fact, that our ancestors 1,000-2,000 years ago they came from the East, our language is also of Asian origin That’s the history and culture that might be underestimated by some but for me these aspects do count.

Business, investment, economy, finances are all similarly important. By recognizing this, we know very well that in the world, we cannot own intangible things. Although they cannot be seen or heard, they still exist.

In terms of foreign policy, this is what we call now the Look East, not only look at East. So that’s what we are doing. This is the second time that I have been paying an official visit to South East Asia within 5 months. However, my original intention was to come to Thailand in November 2011 that had to be postponed owing to the severe floods. However, I am sure that this is not the last time. If I have an opportunity, I will come back with pleasure as our needs and interest not to mention the mutual sympathy are fully shared.

It’s not only because Asia is an emerging continent. It’s not only because we all understand that it’s a huge shift in this regard. This shift may even be accelerating and maybe there are no players that also emerge by the time. It’s also the understanding that we all belong to the same family, and this is perhaps a special factor as far as my country is concerned.

We are now watching and following very closely everything that’s happening now in this part of the world. We are very much interested in your integration efforts and processes. As it is well known, Hungary is a member state of the probably most advanced integration in the world, the EU. We very much believe in the European unification process, despite all the difficulties and challenges that we have to face with from time to time.  I don’t want to go into details, as it could be the topic of a deeper and longer analysis. In addition to that, I might even be unable to draw final and definite conclusions because of the dynamism of the situation. I am about to speak about international issues that we are facing with. I should also speak about how to combine fiscal discipline with economic growth and how to develop a more efficient economic cooperation or governance. So I don’t want to bore you with these subjects. If I am invited again, I’m more than happy to speak about these topics.

Come back to the main issue of this afternoon, i.e. ASEAN let me share a personal experience with you. A couple of years ago I had to write a brief thesis, the subject of which was Economic Cooperation Agreement between the European Economic Community and the ASEAN that was signed in 1988. At that time, ASEAN consisted of 5 nations only, the founding nations. In the meantime, ASEAN developed not only in terms of the number of its member states but also in political terms.  The future prospects of ASEAN proved to be an extremely interesting topic.  I reckon that Hungary and the EU follow it so closely since it’s a key factor for the EU that there can be another integration in the in world which goes to the same direction, despite of all the differences. Still, it goes in a direction that is built upon consists of practically the same elements. If you look at the objectives of the ASEAN community for the year 2015, it is an obvious trend for an international integration to secure the basis of peace, security and stability in the region.

It’s often said this security element set up the fundamental success of the European integration many decades before, that ultimately peace and security was established in Europe. No one can seriously imagine now that two European countries would enter into conflict with one another. Of course we know very well that to some extent this was an exaggeration since two European countries are belonging to the same country; however, they did get into another conflict 20 years ago. But I think this is now over. In many cases, it’s in fact the projection of the European idea, which has extinguished even the possibility of such conflicts in Europe similar to what happened in the former Yugoslavia 20 years ago.

Coming back to the ASEAN, it’s quite clear that this sensibility is a key dimension. In this regard is ASEAN to be a fail or a success. If you look at some internal development in some member states, it seems that ASEAN is fulfilling a very useful and successful function. We have to congratulate all those countries, the key players in ASEAN, whether it’s Thailand or other countries that make a significant contribution to the resolution of those problems. Then, of course, you have another extremely important dimension, the economic part. To create a single production based market is a huge exercise and that’s a mission which I believe is now being implemented quite well. I understand that 87% of state barriers have now been removed in ASEAN, which is an extremely important development and I think this also improves the economies of all ASEAN members.

At the same time we have to see that diversity among ASEAN member states is huge. In Europe we also have differences in our economic development as well, but if you compare this with the ASEAN’s diversity in terms of economic development, of course you realize it’s even greater here and that’s why economic integration is even more difficult than in Europe.  I think we can learn from and cooperate with each other and that’s what we are doing. There was a very high turn out on both sides. Most of the countries were represented by their foreign ministers on the just concluded EU-ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Brunei, which is also a good demonstration of mutual interest.  I have to confess that Europe is more and more aware of the importance of ASEAN.

When saying so I do not only refer to this part of the world, but more precisely to ASEAN, which as I have already states is a successful integration scheme, is becoming a centre of gravity of lots of other cooperation schemes. ASEAN also plays a key role in the ASEM framework.  You have the ASEAN Regional Forum where I was lucky enough to represent the EU in July 2010. So then I learnt how important that forum was with the presence of China, Japan and America.  ASEAN is an indispensable organization now not only for member states, but also for the whole of Asia. That’s why we believe that cooperation between the EU and the ASEAN should be substantially enhanced. We have a lot in common and to do together.  Moreover, if you read the Action Plan that has just been adopted in Brunei, you may have more details or precise idea about all these field of interest.

Let me mention one more thing that is equally important and relevant for the ASEAN region and the EU including Hungary, that is the establishment an of free trade agreement between the EU and the ASEAN. You may recall that the original objective was to try to negotiate and finally sign a region-to-region free trade agreement. Most parties realized very soon that for that time being it was not possible because of the diversity of the points of views, different concerns, challenges and different interests. Consequently, the decision has been made to negotiate bilateral free trade agreements. These free trade agreements, once negotiated and ratified, could be a cornerstone and a building block for an ultimate region-to-region agreement. The point is that these bilateral negotiations do not advance appropriately. My idea is this should be split off. Some countries do make some progress like Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, while some countries are negotiating and some are still in the scoping exercise phase. My messages are very simple. I do not want to interfere with the interests and issues of other countries but I do believe it’s the fundamental interest of each and every ASEAN country, including Thailand, to start negotiations. In order not to get in a situation when they have a competitive disadvantage with others, you are supposed to have a keen interest. You all realize very well that ASEAN is having a free trade agreement with Korea, China, and so on. And if we do not make progress, then our possibilities are reduced.

I think that Europe and the ASEAN are important trading partners.  Investment flows are huge, significant and growing. We have a very successful and efficient policy in EU. We have to realize that we are condemned to have much closer cooperation. On the one hand, there are 500 million people in Europe, the population of which is not growing that rapidly. On the other hand, the ASEAN have more than 600 million people with an ever growing population. I think we are just ideal partners. My country certainly has interest in that. We are not a big player but a medium sized country. We have a bunch of opportunities with countries in ASEAN. Most of them are much bigger than we are, and developing faster at the same time.

Our export through ASEAN countries in 2011 increased by 60% which is considered to be promising considering that was during the crisis period. We are now developing a huge trade surplus. We are highly competitive economically, we accumulated roughly 10 billion dollars surplus in our foreign trade last year. So please, do not worry about Hungary. Even if it’s a high indebtedness ratio, we even put in our constitution like Poland did 2 years ago that the indebtedness ratio cannot go beyond the asset level which in our case is 50%. (I think in Poland is 50-55%.)

Allow me an additional remark on Thailand. Your respective country is an advanced country, a regional political and economic centre.  That is the reason why we believe that Thailand should be kind of a gateway, or bridgehead for my country and the other way round. Everybody wants to be hub. It’s quite clear that everybody cannot become a hub but we aspire for that, which I think is a legitimate ambition.  Hungary recognizes and appreciates very much political reconciliation going on in Thailand. All these are very important ingredients of economic and political success. We believe that we can be very successful partners in our effort.

I’d like to give you one symbolic and practical example – how cooperation between two regions, like the EU and the ASEAN, can be developed and also can be put in actual projects/ actual facts. At the time of our Presidency of the EU, we developed and elaborated and finally made to adopt a strategy called the Danube Region Strategy. This strategy involves altogether 14 countries; 8 of them are EU members and 6 of them are non-EU members. Primarily, member countries are from South-East Europe. But this is the common strategic project, involving ecology, environment, energy, transportation, development project, connectivity, culture, university. It is considered to be kind of a reestablishment of something that existed before, but in a completely different form, adjusted and adapted to the challenges of the 21st century.

 At the same time, we are developing new projects and new ideas and we bring together especially people that all belong to that. In this way, connectivity is not only of transportation routes, railway or highway, but it’s also connectivity of people. I think it’s much more important and at the end of the day much more relevant than technical connectivity, which is also very important of course.

At the same time, I am aware of the fact that there is a project in the ASEAN that is called the Greater Mekong Subregion cooperation. It’s not exactly the same thing, but a similar one, the essence of which is connectivity, development, energy production  and the same ideas how to connect and bring people closer to one another, This is also a proof of my opinion that  we can learn a lot from each other. This cooperation is not only put in the final statement of the EU-ASEAN Foreign Ministerial Meeting in Brunei, but it is also included in the Action Plan of the ASEAN. So these are things which reflect our basic policy and idea. And that’s what we need- to translate ideas, to translate aspirations, to translate policy into reality, into action and projects so that people can understand what we’re talking about. Speaking about beautiful principles is nice but we have to turn it into action and interpret it to real life results.  I wish all of us every success to this hard work.

(kormany.hu)