Hungary is a committed advocate of the Three Seas Initiative (TSI), and insists that this cooperation should not be aimed against anyone, House Speaker László Kövér told a virtual parliamentary forum of the member states.
Since the region’s transition to democracy over three decades ago, Hungary has always supported efforts to boost cooperation between nations in the TSI region, Kövér said. He added that while some initiatives seem to have become lifeless, others such as the Visegrad Group were experiencing a renaissance.
“To retain and reinforce our sovereignty, we should first of all cooperate with one another so as to compound our strength and become real partners of anyone outside the region,” Kövér said.
The initiative, he added, was compatible with other forms of integration and cooperation and could complement them.
Kövér said Hungary needed to be open to cooperation with its eastern and southern neighbours as well, arguing that its partnerships should not be restricted to EU member states, “as our hope is that Europe’s reunification will be complete sooner or later”.
The speaker said that though the initiative looked promising, it would only succeed in the long run were it able to support “geographically balanced projects” that could attract entrepreneurs from the TSI’s member countries and investors outside the region.
Kövér also said that the citizens of the initiative’s member countries did not necessarily have to be up to date on the TSI’s affairs as long as they embraced its central idea of intensifying economic cooperation across central Europe.
The forum was also attended by the parliamentary speakers of the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovenia, among others.
The Three Seas Initiative is a forum of twelve countries located between the Baltic, Black and Adriatic seas that advocates the development of infrastructure in the energy, transport, and digital sectors. Hungary, together with Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, belong to the initiative.
featured image: László Kövér at the video conference; via MTI/Office of National Assembly/Dávid Pólya-Pető