site.btaViktor Orban Assures North Macedonia of Hungary's Support for Its EU Accession

Bilateral relations and the global situation were on the agenda of talks between Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Prime Minister of North Macedonia Hristijan Mickoski on Tuesday.

On Monday and Tuesday, a joint meeting of the governments of the two countries was held in Budapest, as well as bilateral meetings between the ministers of Hungary and North Macedonia. North Macedonia’s government delegation, led by Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski, includes ten ministers and two deputy ministers.

At a joint press conference  Prime Minister Orban said the visit of North Macedonia’s government delegation comes at an important moment when Europe has been living "in the shadow of war" for three years.

Orban noted that Hungary welcomes the US-Russia talks and that Hungarians have high hopes that the war will be brought to an end.

"We are quarrelling with EU countries that are our friends and allies, but they have decided that Ukraine should continue the war. In our view, continuing the war is bad, dangerous and a mistake. We will talk about this in Brussels on Thursday. I welcomed the fact that peace solutions were also discussed at the UN and there North Macedonia and Hungary presented the same point of view, we supported the American proposal which was accepted by the Security Council," said Orban, who said that Hungary "will never accept the EU's dictate" for which it also has to pay fines "in the name of European friendship".

"You can count on our support in the process of North Macedonia's EU membership not only because it is a shame that this process is going slowly and the responsibility for this is not of North Macedonia but ours as EU members. We support your membership, the EU needs to be more competitive in the world, and I see no other solution to improving competitiveness than continuing the enlargement process. Every enlargement so far has been good for the EU," the Hungarian prime minister said.

In his words, Hungary and North Macedonia belong to the same economic region, which also includes Serbia, and this is an area that can be a common economic zone and cooperation can have huge economic potential, and the only problem is that Hungary is in the EU and Serbia and North Macedonia are outside.

"Our strategic goal as a country is to be part of the European family, something we have long deserved. But we should also note that what the Macedonian citizens have done to implement this strategic goal, which unfortunately has not changed from the state it was in 20 years ago, is priceless - that is, the price is so great that it cannot be determined. Because we are talking about bilateralization, not Europeanization of the negotiation process. I hope that this process will finally be unblocked for us, with a great deal of support from friendly Hungary, and that we, too, will begin to negotiate. I am convinced that very soon, if we have the opportunity to start these negotiations on the basis of the real Copenhagen criteria, we will complete them successfully and we will be part of the EU," the Prime Minister Mickoski said.

Mickoski highlighted the "strong financial cooperation" between the two countries, while Orban said work was underway to sign an economic intergovernmental agreement.