Diaconescu stressed that the Nabucco and AGRI projects are common objectives for the two countries, and cross border cooperation is also a priority. In another move, Janos Martonyi said that postponing a political decision regarding Romania and Bulgaria’s accession to the Shengen area is not fair, since the two countries have met the general criteria. The Romanian Foreign Minister thanked his Hungarian counterpart for supporting Romania’s Shengen accession when Budapest held the rotating presidency of the EU. The two officials also discussed the coordination of the two countries’ stances regarding negotiations on the future EU budget. Diaconescu said Romania is looking for allies within the EU to prevent a fall in cohesion funds, given that some EU members have called for their reduction. Romanian Foreign Minister Cristian Diaconescu:

“Together with our Hungarian counterpart we will be able to better coordinate our positions regarding the negotiation of the financial package and the cohesion funds. We start from the idea that one fundamental interest of both Romania and Hungary, just like of all the new EU members, is to maintain dialogue and cooperation with our traditional colleagues in the EU.”

Another topic approached was the parliamentary representation of the Romanian minority in Hungary. The Bucharest authorities would like to see Romanians in neighboring Hungary have a representative in the Budapest parliament. The Hungarian Foreign Minister said that the current election law grants significant benefits to national minorities by reducing the electoral threshold they need to reach in order to have a representative in parliament. Janos Martony explained:

“Such minorities, which would not be able to get enough votes by themselves, can easily forge alliances with other minority groups and this is what we advise them to do, because in this way all the 13 or 14 minorities in Hungary can be represented by MPs who have the right to vote.”

Martony also said that Hungary does not interfere with the electoral competition between the Hungarian parties in Romania, which must decide for themselves how best to ensure their representation in the Bucharest Parliament.