His Excellency Béla Szombati, the Ambassador of the Republic of Hungary
Meeting in the House of Commons on Tuesday 27th April 2004
The Chairman, Sir Ron Halstead, welcome His Excellency – a career diplomat – with the comment that Hungary has gone through an interesting period of European History.
The Ambassador opened his talk by saying that he would talk about Hungarian foreign policy over the last 50 years. “If I have an answer, I will provide and answer” he promised when it came to discussion time at the end.
He explained there were three phases:
1 - Radical re-orientation of Hungarian policies and economic relations
2 - Consolidation of newly established international relations
3 – Added value to international relations, overlapping with 2nd point.
1 - Radical re-orientation
Hungarian carried a heavy legacy and newer initiatives changed radically – more linking with the West over initiatives. 1981/2 Hungary joined IMF and World Bank – relatively few people know this. The Command economy was bound to fail but through joining the IMF the Government received credits and loans from the West and living standards were prevented from going down too quickly. In 1990s is when the real changes took place. They needed to get away from heavy reliance from Eastern Treaty. In 1988 40% of trade was with the West, EU, US and Canada. The shift had to be radical: there was more privatisation to transform the economy, political relations – to make liberal institutions function.
In 1989 the first step was taken and Hungary joined the Council of Europe. In 1996 joined the OECD and in 1999 joined NATO. The fourth step was joining the EU on 1st May this year. This would complete the re-orientation of foreign policy.
EU is important for many reasons:
1- re-joining Europe is important for Hungary in symbolic ways – had felt cut off from mainstream European development.
2- sharing values with institutions and participating in decisions for everyday living
3- three quarters of foreign trade was now with Europe (50% with UK)
4- as a tool for progress in modernisation of country – economically, socially and politically. NATO and EU both are helpful tools for modernisation.
This completes the end of the first phase.
2 – Consolidation
There was a need to contribute in a meaningful way, as in NATO. Steps had to be taken to increase financing for national defence (as low as 4½% of GDP), civil control and financing army reform. There was a shift in the army from territorial towards more mobile troops – enforcing and establishing peace. This required different operational standards in army and a need to change ratio in army. The army had been useless – too many generals but not many combat troops. Hungary needed very mobile troops – this was the point of the reform drive in the Army. Drafting in the army was a thing of the past – there was a need to have a look for niche possibilities – the fundamental ones being: military policing, medical units and engineering. All these needed to be able to operate within NATO and show solidarity in NATO.
Joining EU is the consolidation stage: Hungary had to be prepared to co-operate as a EU member state needing full legal harmonisation of EU Law and had to prepare the economy – companies and enterprises. Now Hungary was becoming a member it has to co-operate as efficiently as possible. The good institutions needed to get the funds with good programmes and profits. The country hopes to catch up and make best possible use of EU funds.
3 – Added value – last phase – as member of NATO and EU.
• contribution – add to culture
• economic – very dynamic country with a flexible country, 3 – 5% GDP growth
• security – internal and external working together and difficult to separate. Has the longest continental border of EU and is therefore extremely important
• relations with Eastern European countries has been good for the last 15 years
• added value to UK and Europe as a whole, seeking to be competitive, efficient (ready to accept new voting system), seeing Europe with a sense of equality with each country retaining its Commissioner – therefore 'all animals should be equal
• solidarity – strong regional policy