Closer cooperation between the countries of the Visegrád Four and South Korea will help the whole of Europe to regain its competitiveness, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said at the Visegrád4-Korea business forum in Budapest.
“The wider and deeper the cooperation between South Korea and the European Union, South Korea and the Visegrád Four (V4), and South Korea and Hungary, the sooner the entire European continent will regain its competitiveness in the world economy,” the prime minister said.
“Europe is struggling today, it has lost its competitiveness in recent years, we have lost it in the economy, we have lost it in efficiency, we are also suffering from demographic problems and we have to deal with security problems,” Orbán added.
He said the biggest single issue for the whole of Europe is how can the EU regain the competitiveness it had before the 2008 financial crisis.
“We cannot regain competitiveness with an economic policy that does not focus on increasing efficiency,” he said.
He emphasized that Hungary therefore supports digitalization, the green economy, tax cuts and an even more open trade policy, but it does not support protectionist ideas, tax increases, nor can it support socialist ideas. According to Orbán, in the effort to regain European competitiveness, “Korea will be our friend, Korea will be our ally.”
In his speech, Orbán also said that Hungary will raise bilateral cooperation to a “new, strategic level” and talks are underway for a large South Korean university campus in Budapest.
