Orbán: Austria ‘natural partner’ of V4

Austria is a “natural partner” of Hungary and the Visegrad Group, and they can cooperate in many areas, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said at a news conference in Prague after a summit of the leaders of the V4 countries and Austria on Thursday.

As an investor and trading partner, Austria is important for central Europe, Orbán said. “It will also remain an important security partner for us in future because it is in the same shoes as us on the issue of migration,” he added.

If migrants “break into” Austria through Hungary, they will either end up staying there or will travel on to Germany, Orbán said, adding that Hungarian border protection was therefore in Austria’s interest.

Meanwhile, he said the summit’s major achievement was to identify areas of cooperation that include migration, security, border protection, competitiveness, climate protection and EU enlargement. The areas of “non-cooperation” have also been defined, one of which is nuclear energy, he added.