in 2010. I mean, the current
government in Hungary and then we understood already, that
although we belong very clearly to NATO and the European Union,
in order to ensure a safe growth path for the national economy,
we have to stand with both feet on the ground, meaning that we
do need to have an outreach to the Western, and to the eastern
investors and companies as well. Therefore, back in 2010, we have
introduced the political strategy called Eastern opening,
which was rather an economic political strategy, meaning that
we started to discuss a lot with Eastern investors in order to in
order to attract them to Hungary. And we started to work
a lot with the Hungarian companies to enable them to
enter the Eastern markets. And as an outcome of that China is
the number one investor this year already in Hungary, not for
the first time 2020 was the first occasion, and China became
our number one trading partner outside of the European Union,
as well. So the political investment basically ended up in
an enhanced economic cooperation and the big FDI inflow from
China to Hungary, which we cherish a lot. This is one of
the reasons why the national economy of ours, who would
resist all the challenges and the crisis we had to go through
in the recent three, four years, and we could stay on the Gulf
growth path. So you're taking a fairly different approach, one
may argue to your European neighbors who are talking a lot
about de risking efforts right now, how do you manage to
balance that relationships? Look, we do believe that both
decoupling and de risking would be a suicide committed by the
European economy. You know, there's a 865 billion euros of
trade volume between China and the European Union on an annual
basis now, how could you decouple without killing the
European economy, now to speak about the fact that we do not
look at China, as if it was a threat or a risk. And if you do
not, do not look at as a country as a risk, then it doesn't make
sense to speak about de risking, right? So we look at China as a
country with which if you cooperate, you can take a lot of
benefit out of it. So for for us, China is an opportunity,
opportunity, but a must, in the meantime, as well, because look
at the backbone of the European economy, which is the automotive
industry, a new industry is being born in front of our eyes,
basically, with the revolution of the automotive industry,
moving from the traditional powertrain to electric. And if
you look at the European manufacturing companies, you see
the automotive ones, you see that they can produce very good
electric cars, but they cannot produce batteries. And if you
don't have better, you cannot start the engine of an electric
car. So therefore, we do look at the cooperation between the
Chinese and the Western European companies as a must in order to
make the new European industry operational. Let's talk about
that. Obviously, we've had this major $7.6 billion investment by
contemporary amperex, the Chinese battery giant into your
country that biggest buy that company overseas to service the
European car market, where are we up to in terms of that
project? And can we expect to see more investments like that?
Are there any in the pipeline that you can share with us?
Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, you know, the fact is that
these big Chinese investments come to Hungary because of the
German carmakers being present in Hungary. So while the German
Foreign Minister speaks about decoupling, the CEOs of the
German carmakers usually call me to convince their Chinese
suppliers to come to Hungary. So there's a big, let's say, gap
between the political perception and the reality on the grounds
for a decoupling would kill the European economy and would be
very harmful to the German economy as well. Look, we are
the only country besides China and Germany, where the free
premium German carmakers are present and the presence of
Mercedes has attracted CTL to come to Hungary. Now, they have
the major licenses the grant preparation has already been
started and we are following the timeline which was required by
the company. The presence of BMW attracted evey energy, another
Chinese battery manufacturer to come they basically build their
factory next door to the to the BMW plant, and we have
agreements with two other top
on Chinese battery manufacturers already, who are going to
announce soon, their investments. So
this means that this year, we will be able to double the FDI
influx compared to last year. And last year was a record year
with 6.5 billion euros of FDI. Committed to Hungary. Now this
year, we will reach 14, based on the Chinese battery
manufacturers just recently, who are your Cobalt has committed
itself as well with a 1.3 billion euro investment to
Hungary to produce the cathode for CA TL, and you know, the
more battery factories are coming, the more suppliers are
arriving as well. Currently, we are number four in the world
when it comes to capacity, thanks to the Chinese investors
and the Koreans because SK Innovation and Samsung SDI have
been operating huge plants already in Hungary. So we are
number four now. And when the investments of the four big,
Chinese included, including CTL and EB energy are going to be
completed, we will be number two in the world regarding the
capacity of producing electric batteries. And if you put into
consideration that we are number 95. Globally, when it comes to
population, this is really remarkable. Yeah, I suppose that
makes sense in terms of needing that material and that access to
it. And that really helps supply chains. Let's switch gears to of
course, something that has been dominating headlines as this
event the World Economic Forum got underway. And is that is the
developments out of Russia over the weekend. How are you
watching that? Look, we have been following these events very
closely. Because we are in the closed region of Russia. And
whatever happens in Russia, especially when it comes to
internal security situation, it does definitely have an impact
on the security on the region or can have a serious impact on the
region. Therefore, we were following the events on the
weekend. And I've been in touch with a Foreign Minister Lavrov
and Deputy Prime Minister Montero who have ensured me at
that time that they are managing the situation. And I've been in
touch with the Belarus colleague of mine as well, Mr. Oleinik,
who has already informed me about the deal between President
Lukashenko and Mr. precaution, well, before it went public, so
we were aware of the developments. And, you know, for
us, peace is very important, because we are in the
neighborhood of the war. The war has really, really serious
impacts on Hungary, when it comes to the energy prices,
inflation, food prices, not to speak about the Hungarians who
are dying in the war, representing the Hungarian
community in Ukraine. So we are super interested in peace, and
whatever brings closer to peace, we support it, whatever brings
closer to a threat of escalation, we do not support. I
want to pick up on that because of course, you've recently said
that Hungary cannot be compared to some of your neighbors when
it comes to weaning themselves off that energy. I mean, how
we're talking about keeping a foot in both camps, are you
managing to balance that relationship between Moscow and
also European countries? Look, when it comes to energy, we have
never considered energy as if it was of political or ideological
nature, because gas doesn't have an ideology. It has physics. So
you need a physical infrastructure, you need source
and you need pipeline. And if you look at the energy
infrastructure map of Central Europe, it is obvious for
everybody that we cannot get rid of the rational sources, because
if we do so we cannot supply the country. And then who will
explain to the Hungarian people why gas
access is being restricted. So therefore, we have the fair and
the based on experience, satisfactory cooperation with
Russia reliable cooperation with Russia when it comes to the
energy deliveries, be it oil, gas or nuclear fuel, and we just
simply don't want to give it up. Of course, we are working on
diversification. But for us, diversification does not mean
that you know, changing one source for the other or
replacing one source with the other. But diversification for
us is about the more possible sources and the more possible
routes to be taken into consideration. So we are
negotiating with the Qatar is with the Azeris and with other
delivers, but these deliveries cannot take over the Russian
they can be supplementary or additional
deliveries in enhancing our energy security, obviously, but
getting rid of the Russian sources for us. It's impossible,
and they keep on explaining it to our European colleagues. But
unfortunately currently the the political atmosphere in Europe
is very ideological is very emotional. It's very hard to to
cool down the tensions and to carry out a discussion based on
common sense. Let's put it this way.