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Orban: Europe’s Interest that Azerbaijan Gas Reaches CEE
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Budapest, November 11 (MTI) – It is in the strategic interest of the whole of Europe that gas from Azerbaijan should reach its central and eastern region, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Tuesday after talks in Parliament with Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s president.
After signing a joint declaration on a strategic partnership between the two counties, Orban said that current contracts only guarantee the delivery of Azeri energy to southern Europe. “Our job in the next few years is to create the conditions for Azeri gas to come up from the south to central Europe, too,” the Hungarian premier said.
The only way to succeed is for neighbouring states to link up their pipeline networks, he said, and urged member states of the European Union to form a common energy market, “the first step being nothing other than the connection of pipeline networks of neighbouring states.”
Orban called Hungary a “model state and a fair and correct partner,” since there it can supply energy to every neighbouring country from where it receives energy. “We are unique in this respect in the region,” he said.
The Hungarian-Azeri strategic partnership between “two dynamically developing states” serves the interests not only of Hungary but of the EU as well, since the EU and Azerbaijan already concluded a partnership and cooperation agreement in 1996, Orban said.
He called Azerbaijan a particularly valuable country because “it creates a certain bridge between Europe and Asia” and serves as proof “that there exist certain countries in the east that are secular and can therefore formulate their ties with the western world based on rational grounds and common sense.”
Orban called Azerbaijan a “model country” from the point of view how an economic system can be built on an energy sector that then trickles down to other sectors.
The prime minister said Hungary had many reasons for speaking about Azerbaijan, its president and his father, Heydar Aliyev, “with great respect.”