Azeri green electricity will help reduce Hungarian gas consumption and achieve our green goals - foreign minister

In a statement issued by the ministry in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, the minister pointed out that "securing our current and future energy supply is not possible without the Turkic states". He based this on the fact that the natural gas pipeline through Turkey, Bulgaria and Serbia to Hungary is the only transport route in Europe today that is free of restrictions and technical difficulties and can transit gas from Russia at full capacity. "The operation of the TurkStream is a fundamental guarantee for the security of energy supply in Hungary," he underlined.

The Hungarian government had already made an announcement the other day about the acquisition of green electricity from Azerbaijan, and now Szijjártó said that "on the basis of the agreement between the European Union and Azerbaijan, green electricity will be able to reach Europe via Georgia, Romania and Hungary, which can also reduce the amount of natural gas used and help us achieve our environmental goals".

The minister announced that the participants to the meeting also agreed to set up an OTS investment fund, in which Hungary will participate. He welcomed the news and said that attracting more investment to Hungary would be a successful way of defending against the recession in Europe, and since 2018 more investment has been coming from the East than from the West.

"We need to keep up the pace of investment from the East in order for Hungary to be a local exception to the European recession, and the Turkic investment fund will help us to do that," he said. He also said that the volume of trade with Turkic states had increased 2.5 times in the past 12 years, now exceeding $4.5 billion. Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey and Uzbekistan are members of the OTS, with Hungary and Turkmenistan as observers.

Cover photo: Péter Szijjártó's Facebook page