ISA Expands With Hungary Ahead of Mahatma Gandhi’s Birthday on 2nd October

Hungary has announced to join the International Solar Alliance during Indian foreign minister visit to the Visegrad group. During the visit, the Indian foreign minister and Hungarian counterpart discussed a wide range of issues including energy cooperation.

Visegrad Group or V4 are formed up by 4 central European countries—Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland. They have been working together to further integrate into the European Union and figure quite high in Human Development Index. If counted as a single state the V4 is the fifth largest economy in Europe and the 12^th largest in the world.

Since India and V4 are pro-nuclear, Hungary’s announcement is looked at as a way of cooperation in Solar via ISA and Nuclear power development amidst the anti-nuclear brigade in Europe. Jaishankar will later visit Poland shortly.

Earlier this month on August 5, Haiti signed an agreement to join the ISA. Led by Haitian foreign minister Bocchit Edmond the country is the latest addition and an official member of the ISA treaty organization.

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During a recent visit to Bahrain, Indian PM Modi and Prince Khalifa after the delegation-level talks witnessed the exchange of MoUs in the areas of culture, space, collaboration with International Solar Alliance (ISA).

International Solar Alliance was launched in 2015 by the Indian PM Modi and French President Francois Hollande at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris. It is a major global initiative for contributing to the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement through rapid and massive deployment of solar energy and mobilize more than US $ 1000 billion of investments needed by 2030, and pave the way for future technologies adapted to the needs.

The ISA second general assembly is scheduled to be held from 30 Oct- 2 November in New Delhi and the Indian government has set a target to expand its member nations to a 100 before 2^nd October which marks the 150^th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. So far 77 countries have signed the ISA Framework Agreement and 54 countries have signed and ratified the ISA Framework Agreement.