German Chancellor Angela Merkel is to negotiate in private for several hours during her visit to Budapest next week, the news website Origo has reported.
The talks on 2 February, lasting almost three hours, will be followed by an international press conference. It remains unknown whether any agreements will be signed at the meeting.
Angela Merkel is travelling to Hungary in honour of the twenty-fifth anniversary of opening up the country’s borders. Following her meeting with Prime Minister Orbán, she is scheduled to meet representatives of the Hungarian Jewish community in Budapest’s Dohány utca synagogue, after which she will visit the German-Hungarian chamber of commerce.
The news website’s sources believe that the proposal voiced by the German Chancellor on 23 January in Lisbon will be addressed at negotiations. Speaking in the Portuguese capital last month, Ms. Merkel proposed a free trade area comprising the EU and Russia in exchange for the peaceful settlement of the situation in the Ukraine. Withdrawing Russian troops from the Crimean Peninsula could be one of the deal’s conditions.
Hungary’s support for the policy of fiscal prudence advocated by Germany within the EU and sanctions against Russia will also doubtlessly be raised during the German Chancellor’s visit to Hungary in early February, an earlier governmental background discussion revealed.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel was chosen as “Person of the Year” in 2014 by The Times. The newspaper justified its choice with her key role in preserving European stability amid re-emerging Russian agression in Eastern Europe.
via origo.hu
photo: Johannes Eisele/AFP