Mutually beneficial cooperation was preferable to rivalry, Péter Szijjártó said after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers. “We haven’t entered, neither do we want to enter … competition between China and Europe or China and Hungary,” Szijjártó told a press conference. He said relations should not be spoken of in military terms. Mutually beneficial cooperation should embrace “the automotive revolution”, he said, noting that European manufacturers had become dependent on South Korean and Chinese batteries. Szijjártó said political decisions had been made in Brussels regarding the car industry, vital to Europe’s economic future, in the direction of the industry’s radical renewal. “There are too many interests by now for this transition not to be successful,” he said. While developments for manufacturing electric cars went ahead in Europe, politicians forgot to create batteries production capacities, which are largely owned by Chinese companies, he said. “So, anyone advocating the separation of the Chinese and European economies risks landing a massive blow to the European economy,” he said.