After years of tension, Hungary and Germany reboot diplomatic ties
Hungary and Germany will work intensively in the upcoming period to rebuild bilateral political and diplomatic ties that in recent years “went off the rails mainly for ideological reasons”, the state secretary of the foreign ministry said in Berlin on Thursday.
Hungary-Germany relations, with the government led by Friedrich Merz entering power in May, have turned a new leaf, a foreign ministry statement cited Levente Magyar as saying. Merz’s government, he added, had ditched the policies of its predecessor and was now showing openness towards Hungary in respect of several issues.
“A healthy dialogue has started between the two countries, which was unprecedented in recent years,” he said, adding that past fruitful ties had soured under the burdens of migration, the Russia-Ukraine war, and other issues centred on ideological disputes.
He said Germany continued to be the second largest investor in Hungary, with German companies directly employing some quarter of a million people, and the number of Hungarians holding jobs connected to the activities of German companies could be up to one million.
“A quarter of Hungary’s foreign trade is linked to Germany, and several other interests also tightly connect Hungarians and Germans,” he said, emphasising the importance of these ties. He welcomed the German government’s openness towards Hungary in the vital area of European competitiveness, which he said had been destroyed by the European Commission “in a series of ill-fated and ideology-driven decisions”.
“We will carry out intensive coordination talks with our German friends in the coming months on how competitiveness can be strengthened in Europe. We have a vested interest in things going well for Germans because, due to the aforementioned links, we are directly affected,” he said.
He also talked about converging interests in strengthening European defence capabilities. “We must again strengthen our defence capabilities based on national armies. Germany will spend hundreds of billions on this in the upcoming years,” he said.
“There is only one difference of opinion between us when it comes to looking at the bigger picture. Germans see Russia as a potential enemy, while Hungary doesn’t see Russia as an enemy but as an economic partner with which it wants to maintain relations despite the war situation,” he added.
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