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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Ladies and gentlemen,

During our talks with Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban, we covered a broad range of issues pertaining to our cooperation. We reviewed our joint efforts aimed at implementing the agreements reached at our meeting in Moscow on January 31 last year, and made plans for the future.

Hungary is Russia’s very important trade and economic partner. In terms of foreign trade, Russia and Hungary rank first among non-EU member states, and overall third after Germany and Austria.

Both countries maintain a good mutual investment rate – about $2 billion of accrued investment by both Russia in the Hungarian economy and by Hungary in the Russian economy.

We discussed with Mr Prime Minister certain problems in our mutual trade that we identified two years ago. We expect to see better figures for 2013, when we have them. 

Our cooperation in nuclear energy is a good example. Today we signed an agreement on the construction of two new power units, while already now the Paks Nuclear Power Plant accounts for 40% of all electricity production in Hungary.

The commissioning of the two new units will undoubtedly enhance Hungary’s energy independence and improve its security.

This is a unique agreement since 40% of all the work will be performed in Hungary. This means that an estimated $3 billion will be spent to maintain jobs in Hungary and the country’s budget will receive over $1 billion in tax.

We also discussed traditional energy sources, exchanged views on joint work under the South Stream project, and discussed our relations in the cultural, humanitarian and spiritual areas, including student exchanges.

I am certain that the agreement we reached today will help further expand cooperation between Russia and Hungary in all these areas.

In conclusion, I would like to thank Mr Prime Minister for the joint work and for the atmosphere that we enjoyed not only during these talks, but also in the course of the work of our experts and government officials.

Thank you.