Szijjarto: EU can only be built on strong nation-states

The European Union can only be built on the foundation of strong nation-states, the Hungarian foreign minister said in Stockholm on Tuesday. "The European Union's report card hasn't been the best in recent years," Peter Szijjarto told a press conference following a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Visegrad Group (V4) and the Nordic Baltic Eight (NB8). He noted that V4 and NB8 foreign ministers were meeting at a time when the EU was about to lose one of its member states for the first time. Transatlantic relations "are also languishing, although they are unbreakable", Szijjarto said. In addition to all this, he said, the EU is facing "serious challenges" while it is quickly losing competitiveness.