Foreign ministers of the Visegrad Four countries – Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – met in Budapest for talks on specific programmes under the European Union’s Eastern Partnership on Tuesday.
The EU aims to help its eastern neighbours with their democratic processes, efforts to build market economies, observing human rights, mobility and border policing, as well as offering them more flexible visa regulations, Peter Balazs, the foreign minister, told a news conference after the meeting.
Participants also call for closer business relations, free-trade agreements and integrating energy systems and traffic routes, Balazs said.
Balazs said the Visegrad countries will use their local expertise and experience to put first-class proposals to the European Commission on how to fill the programme with content and secure for it necessary funding.
Among proposed projects Balazs named a transport-route extension, an east-west railway freigh route development, easing border crossing and visa restrictions.
He added that the effects of the Serbian-Macedonian-Montenegrin visa-free regime are being monitored and experiences will be adopted for the Eastern Partnership region.
Stefan Fule, the EU Commissioner in charge of Enlargement, said at the meeting that the EU will support any initiative to help good neighbourly relations. Despite six countries in the Partnership having differing agendas, common ground can be found in democratisation and strengthening the market economy, he said.
The plenary session of the meeting was attended by representatives the EU’s eastern partners: the Baltic States as well as of Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Balazs also announced that the V4 group would soon open a joint representative office – a Visegrad House – in Cape Town, South Africa. Hungary also proposed that its recently-opened Hungarian Consulate General in Chongqing could be used for joint representation. Strengthening the Visegrad countries’ presence in the earthquake-ridden Santiago de Chile and in India’s dynamically-developing Mumbai was also mentioned.
The Eastern Partnership programme was launched under a Swedish-Polish initiative last May. The institutional framework is already in place but actual projects have yet to be defined.
What a waste of EU Time and Money…
Helping Eastern Europe with Its Democratic Proccesses?????????
Obvioulsy the EU have never bothered to take 1 Second to look at Hungary and how Democracy is still at the Theoratical stage……
The Hungarians only know one form of Democracy and It’s called Communism……