BUDAPEST, 19 April 2022 – During an official visit, Gerd Müller, Director General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), met with government officials in Budapest to discuss avenues for further expanding cooperation between UNIDO and Hungary.

The Director General met László Palkovics, Minister for Innovation and Technology, to discuss opportunities for cooperation in such areas as green technology, energy access, and educational and training programmes, as well as how UNIDO could facilitate developing countries’ access to Hungary’s knowledge and expertise.

“I would like to make UNIDO the UN agency for technology and knowledge transfer, as well as for building investment partnerships. The support of the industrialized countries, including Hungary, is of great importance for this,” underlined the Director General.

For his part, Minister Palkovics proposed to start new projects with UNIDO. For this purpose, he proposed to initiate bilateral, expert-level consultations to identify an area of common interest and launch a joint initiative. “Now, we are ready to organize workshops in Budapest together with UNIDO in order to transfer our experience of cooperation with the African countries. We also consider it expedient to examine how Hungary and UNIDO could jointly participate in certain European Union projects. In the future, we would like to consider signing a memorandum of cooperation that will facilitate the programming of new activities with UNIDO,” stated the Minister.

During a meeting with Péter Sztáray, State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Director General Müller underlined the long-standing cooperation with Hungary and introduced his vision of a renewed partnership between developing countries, emerging and industrialized economies.

Hungary is an important strategic partner of UNIDO and a potential new donor country for technical cooperation activities. Hungary’s support for UNIDO mandate has been demonstrated through the country’s contribution to UNIDO’s technical cooperation projects and partnering on global and regional events.