Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto spoke to N1’s Foreign Affairs Editor Ivana Dragicevic last week in Zagreb, discussing the ongoing negotiations to fill top EU jobs following the European Parliament election in May and Hungary's conditions for those candidates who want the country's support.

On his visit to Zagreb last Wednesday, Szijjarto had met with Croatian Energy Minister Tomislav Coric to announce that Hungary was preparing an offer to buy 25 percent plus one share in LNG Hrvatska, the company which would own and manage the future LNG terminal on Croatia’s island of Krk.

“Now we basically buy 100 percent of our gas from Russia… obviously from a national security point of view, we are interested in diversifying our gas supply,” Szijjarto told N1. “We would not only like to be a partner in (the sense of) only buying gas from the terminal, but would like to be more involved strategically.”

“So when it comes to our offer, we have decided… that we will submit to the Croatian government to buy 25 percent plus one share of the company, which would make us a strategic partner,” he said.

Commenting on the complicated past of the two countries’ energy cooperation, especially concerning the Ina-Mol case, Szijjarto admitted there have been issues in the past, and added he has called for caution in this project, suggesting that the two governments sign an agreement on cooperation in the LNG terminal.

“We respect your Prime Minister a lot”

Szijjarto also talked about the ongoing negotiations on EU top appointments following the European Parliament election in May this year.

Croatian Prime Minister, Andrej Plenkovic, has been designated by the EPP group to represent the group in negotiations with two other alliances – the Social Democrats, and the Liberals – in the process of negotiating new EU leaders.

“We respect your Prime Minister a lot, we’re happy he’s involved in these talks,” he said. “What we know is that it’s very important that a central European is involved in these talks… central Europe is now heavily contributing to the European economy performance, so we have a good chance (to fill) one of the four top jobs of the European Union.”

“We have three expectations for anyone who would like to hold the top job in the European Union and looks for our support: number one, to be in favour of stopping migration, and not managing migration. Number two, to respect the nations and the member states, and number three, to be ready to give priority to the Christian culture in Europe,” Szijjarto said.

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