The Hungarian Foreign Minister, Dr Janos Martonyi, says Ireland is "extremely important and relevant" for his country as its government negotiates entry to the EU and endeavours to catch up with more developed countries.
Aware that a referendum is being held here on whether to ratify the Treaty of Nice, he said a decision not to do so would be "a really serious blow to the European reunification process" - a phrase he prefers to EU enlargement.
He spoke yesterday to this newspaper and at an Institute of European Affairs seminar during a short visit to Dublin. He also met the President, Mrs McAleese, members of the Oireachtas and the Government.
Ireland figures in Hungarian debates about how to preserve national identity in an integrating Europe and a globalising world, he said.
There are similar commitments to values of independence, diaspora and the idea of belonging to Europe; similar experiences of peripherality and external occupation; similar policies on levels of corporate taxation to attract foreign direct investment for long-term growth; and a parallel success in retaining rural folk culture and music in an urban environment.
"Ireland means catching up can be done. It is seen in Hungary as the main inspiration, model and image of that process. If we really want to maintain diversity we have to stick to identity - that is also the Irish message."
Dr Martonyi says the Treaty of Nice has been substantially better received in the candidate states than among the 15 EU member-states. "Nice for us is a great success and achievement, fulfilling the conditions for EU enlargement". He has noticed an important shift of attitude in recent weeks among all those concerned with negotiating enlargement - "most realise it will happen and must be taken seriously".
The treaty makes enhanced co-operation easier - allowing smaller groups of states than the whole to go ahead with agreed projects using the common institutions. Dr Martonyi says he is "not afraid of a two-tier Europe at all" as a result of these new clauses.
"If you go into the real substance and realise where it can be applied you see this is not a real risk - especially if you support a more united Europe, strengthening as well as deepening it."
So long as all countries are open to join these projects (if necessary by being given help to do so) and if there is no discrimination, he would have no problem whatsoever with the flexibility clauses.
He describes himself as a long-standing federalist, but hesitates to use the term in the important emerging debate on the overall constitutional shape of the EU - the "post-Nice agenda", which will lead to another Inter-Governmental Conference in 2004. He understands federal to mean decentralisation to diverse localities, regions and nations rather than a superstate centralised in Brussels. "By its history and culture central Europe is more attracted to a deeper and stronger Europe than others" in which the smaller and middle-sized states would be better protected. But he acknowledges that other Hungarians might take a different view; they are having their own debates on these issues, just as elsewhere in Europe.
He hopes Hungary will complete all but the most difficult chapters in the enlargement negotiations by the end of this year.
