UAE President travels Eastern Europe, meets Hungary’s Orbán

UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed traveled through Eastern Europe and Turkey this week, visiting Hungary where he strolled through Parliament with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

The stop in Budapest on Thursday followed visits to Serbia and Albania, where Sheikh Mohamed led a delegation of cabinet ministers and senior UAE executives who explored business opportunities in the region.

Also traveling with the UAE President were Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohamed, Deputy Chairman of the Presidential Court for Special Affairs; Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, and CEO of ADNOC; Dr. Thani Al Zeyoudi, Minister of Foreign Trade; and Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Chairman of the Executive Affairs Authority and CEO of Mubadala.

Prominent in the entourage in Serbia was Mohamed Alabbar, chief of Dubai-based Emaar and Eagle Hills Properties, who has been active for years in the capital of Belgrade and other Eastern European cities.

Most recently, Alabbar has teamed up with Jared Kushner, founder of Miami-based Affinity Partners and son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump, to build a Trump Tower hotel in Belgrade on the site of the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defense.

In Hungary, government officials from the two countries signed 14 draft agreements in fields ranging from energy, agriculture, food production, defense and telecommunications. Budapest-based 4iG Space and Defense Technologies also signed three preliminary deals with Abu Dhabi’s defense conglomerate EDGE Group.

The Hungarian company also agreed to explore joint investment opportunities with Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala and work with UAE telecom e& on submarine cables and data centers, Hungary Today reports.