Direct flights will soon connect Kazakhstan with several major European cities, including Budapest, Riga, Vienna, and Munich, the Interfax news agency reported. The decision was taken at the October meeting of the EU-Kazakhstan Cooperation Council in Luxembourg, chaired by Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó.
Currently, there are only 34 direct flights a week to Kazakhstan from five European countries: the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland. The addition of Greece during the summer season brings the total to six countries. Expansion is scheduled to start as early as spring 2025.
Until 2016, Kazakh airlines were banned from the European Union due to safety concerns. After an accident in 2019, further investigations were ordered and they were finally removed from the EU blacklist in May 2024.
Improved air connectivity is expected to have a positive impact on economic relations between the European Union and Kazakhstan.
- The European Union has a lot to gain from cooperation with Central Asia, as shown by the fact that the importance of the region has now been recognized by everyone in Europe, following the Hungarian government by about ten to twelve years, Szijjártó pointed out at the meeting in Luxembourg.
Kazakhstan is also developing its internal air traffic, and it was recently announced that three new airports will be built in 2025 to make the country's more remote regions more accessible to tourists.
