BUDAPEST, November 21. /TASS/. The era of Western supremacy is over and Europe must adapt to new geopolitical realities to survive, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said.

Western countries have sought to impose their development model on the world in recent decades, believing that “other nations will accept it in exchange for economic and financial advantages”, he stressed during his speech in the fifth international conference of the Eurasia Forum in Budapest. “This ideal has failed,” said the Hungarian Prime Minister.

“Asian countries have become stronger, demonstrating their ability to rise, prosper and establish themselves as independent centers of economic and political power. As a result, the center of the world economy has shifted towards East, and the economies of Eastern countries are now growing four times faster than Western economies,” Orban noted.

He believes that these changes are causing losses to the European Union and that this will continue to be the case “unless Europe finds its place in relation to Asia” and builds mutually beneficial cooperation across Eurasia.

Furthermore, Orban stressed that Hungary does not plan to wait for the EU to put itself in order and adopt a new strategy based on cooperation rather than divisions into blocs. According to the Hungarian Prime Minister, Budapest already plans to act as a bridge between West and East, strengthening trade and economic cooperation with its EU allies and partners in China, South Korea and other Asian countries.