Bulgaria Gives Warm Welcome to Hungary's President

Hungarian President Pal Schmitt will pay an official visit to Sofia on September 7 through to 9 at the invitation of his Bulgarian counterpart Georgi Parvanov.

Schmitt will be accompanied by his wife.

The two presidents are expected to discuss Bulgaria and Hungary's cooperation within the European Union and the situation in Southeast Europe.

They will also consider opportunities for further trade-economic cooperation between the two countries, as well as in the fields of culture, science and education.

Schmitt and Parvanov will welcome the participants of a Bulgarian-Hungarian business forum.

Hungary, which took over the rotating Presidency of the European Union at the beginning of the year for six months, has been a staunch supporter of Bulgaria's entry into Europe's so-called Schengen area, within which citizens can travel freely without border controls.

Bulgaria and Romania were initially hoping to join the Schengen Area by March 2011 but leading Western European states, including France and Germany, insisted that their Schengen accession be tied to their post-EU accession progress on problem areas as monitored by the European Commission under the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism.

Hungary has made it clear that it will work in close cooperation with the new head of the EU Presidency, Poland, in order to provide for consistency on a number of the projects that Hungary took up during its term.

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