At a joint press conference with his Georgian counterpart, Ilia Darchiasvili, the head of the ministry stated that Georgia is an important partner in overcoming the future challenges facing Europe. “On the one hand, Georgia also understands and supports the neighborhood policy based on peace and stability. On the other hand, Georgia can be an important player in the future in making Europe’s energy diversification efforts a success. And the third is that the country is extremely committed to European integration,” he said.
“Our goal is to strengthen the European Union, to break the spiral that is taking the European Union into a worse and worse shape,” he said. He also explained that the best tool for this is enlargement, since the EU needs new momentum, freshness, and dynamism, and the countries that continue to enthusiastically fight for future membership can bring this in the most. “Georgia is also such a country. Georgia, which has produced such economic growth in the recent period – often double-digit economic growth – with which it can definitely contribute to the European Union’s competitiveness finally improving again after many years of decline,” he pointed out.
Péter Szijjártó emphasized that our country strongly supported the EU’s decision in December, by which Georgia was granted candidate status. “This was the right decision, and to some extent it made amends for the previous unfair decision, which did not grant Georgia candidate status at the same time as Ukraine,” he said. “During its EU presidency, Hungary will help Georgia to make the accession process as fast as possible, as we believe that not only Georgia, but also the European Union can gain a lot from this,” he declared.
The minister also touched on the issue of energy security. “It’s completely clear, everyone can see this, even those whose eyes are covered by the veil of ideology, that the European continent cannot guarantee the security of its own energy supply by itself, it needs external resources,” he explained. However, according to his words, the Caucasus region can greatly contribute to the continent’s energy supply, since the countries of the region have an amazing potential in the field of renewable production, which is also important from the point of view of environmental protection.
He announced that the Azeri-Georgian-Hungarian-Romanian agreement will enter into force on Monday, based on which green energy, mainly wind energy, can be imported from the Caucasus to Europe. “This would be a joint investment of historical significance, since there is no other 1,200-kilometer-long submarine power line anywhere else in the world.