"Growth must be achieved while continuing to decrease debt and keeping the budget deficit in check", stressed Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Warsaw.

'Hungary is a partner in the development of such a European economic policy", the Prime Minister stated in Warsaw on Wednesday following the summit of the heads of state of the Visegrád nations (V4), which was also attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande. The Prime Minister also took the opportunity to ask for sufficient breathing space for his government's economic policy.

This was the first high-level meeting of its kind for the heads of state of the V4 (the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia) and the Weimar triangle (France, Germany and Poland), the central topics of which included European economic and defence policy.

At the press conference following the meeting, the Hungarian Prime Minister said that the talks held in the Polish capital had convinced him that the V4 will continue to be a significant partnership in the future.

"Hungary has put huge effort into decreasing its debt and putting its budget in order", said the Prime Minister, explaining the basic principles of his government's economic policy. However, he also noted that while today the Hungarian cabinet agrees that starting up economic growth is the most important issue, "we would like to see European politics which is capable of achieving economic growth while reducing debt and managing the deficit". "Hungary wishes to be and is capable of being a future partner in such a European economic policy", the Prime Minister declared.

During the meeting, he continued, it also became clear with relation to defence policy that we are all ready to participate in the development of strong European and Central European military cooperation.

With regard to comments on Hungarian economic policy measures, Prime Minister Orbán stated that Hungary has its own economic policy, and similarly to other meetings, he also had asked the participants of the Warsaw forum to "provide Hungarian economic policy with sufficient breathing space for the implementation of measures that are suitable for solving our own troubles and problems" in view of the fact that Hungary is not part of the eurozone and so the effects of measures there has an extremely small effects on members states within the eurozone.

"Hungary's problems are not the same as those of Sweden or Great Britain, for instance, and so it does not seem reasonable to require the same economic policy", he explained, adding that "Hungary participates in such negotiations in the name of common sense".

(orbanviktor.hu; kormany.hu)