PM Orbán: Hungary does not need to leave the EU because it will fall apart

Commenting on impending US-Russia talks on the war in Ukraine, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview to public radio: “Hallelujah! This is what we were hankering for.”

Orbán: Trump will cut the Gordian knot

Orbán said: “This is what we placed our bets on.” “This is what we have built our Hungarian strategy on: the war should not drag on, a new American president would come — and with the Europeans proving to be lame and paralysed — he would cut the Gordian knot … and forge peace.” Orbán said “rapid change” was taking place in the areas of “peace, migration, green policies, gender, family and Christianity”, but Europe was “resisting”.

Hungary’s thinking on these issues, he added, had always been the same as President Donald Trump‘s current thinking. He said it had been worth it for Hungary to stick to its position, adding that Trump was now “the voice of peace” in the Western world.

The consensus had been that “continuing the war is good” and those promoting peace were “morally deplorable” and “Putin lapdogs”. “Now it turns out that peace is good and war is bad.” Similarly, “supporting migrants” was seen as “good” in Western Europe, while opposing them was “bad”, he said. But now the US holds that “migration is bad and a border protection policy that stops migration is good,” he added.

The community of faith is good and Christianity is a valuable tradition

The same was true of green issues, Orbán said. “It’s fine if the world is cleaner, healthier and greener, but this must not come at the expense of good economic sense,” he said, adding that green policies should dovetail with economic realities.

When it came to gender policy, those who opposed fluidity were seen as “medieval, conservative and backward”. “Now the Americans say that a person is either a man or a woman; this is the good position while the other is unnatural,” he said. The same was true of the traditional family, he said, insisting that traditional ideas on the importance family were now accepted again. Also, Christianity had been “mocked”, he said. Now the American president “says faith is good, the community of faith is good and Christianity is a valuable tradition.”

The prime minister said that sanctions had cost Hungary 6.5 billion euros each year, totalling 20 billion. With a new US president and peace, “Russia will be reintegrated into the world economy, giving the Hungarian economy a massive boost,” he said. “We’ll win so much from peace.”

Noting that the EU’s foreign affairs chief recently declared that Europe wanted to participate in the peace talks, Orbán said seats at the negotiating table were not an automatic right and only those who “stood up for themselves and fought for it” deserved a seat. It was not clear why Europe, a supporter of the war, should get a seat at the table, he added.

Orbán about migration

He said Hungary would be present “wherever important Hungarian interests are at stake … commensurate with our weight”. Hungary, he added, would stand up for its interests. Meanwhile, Orbán said that Hungary had been telling all of Europe, including Germany, since 2015 that migration is dangerous and “we must protect ourselves against it”.

Commenting on Thursday’s car ramming attack in Munich where an Afghan asylum seeker ploughed into a crowd of people, Orbán said: “It often happens that you’re not happy that you and up being right. This is one of those situations.”

Orbán said Hungary had been telling not just Germany but all of Europe since 2015 “not to lose their common sense in connection with migration”. “Hungary has had its feet on the ground from the very first moment and knew that this is a danger we must protect ourselves from,” he added.

“What we’re happy about is that we’ve stayed out of this,” Orbán said, adding that migration was “a European disease” that had not spread to Hungary.

“I don’t know how many years they’ve been kicking us,” Orbán said, noting that Hungary must pay massive fines for refusing to allow migrants in. “We have pushed back against the European migration pact … we have persevered.”

Soros plan again

The prime minister spoke of “the Soros plan”, saying that while the left wing in Hungary “denied it existed”, 9 million migrants had come to Europe in the past nine years, so “it actually worked”. He said European leaders, politicians, human smugglers, criminals, NGOs were importing “foreigners who do not belong here”. Many, he said, did not have “peaceful intentions” or a desire to work “but rather want to live on our money”.

Germans, he said, were insistent “something good will come out of this”, but “terrorism and violence” had appeared in Europe instead. “Public security has deteriorated”, he said, adding that the economic burdens were becoming “unbearable”. Regarding migration, Orbán said Trump was “doing the same thing at his country’s borders that Hungary is doing on its southern border”.

Orbán said the gains made by Germany’s AfD party were a positive development for Hungary. The prime minister said migration also raised a “problem of democracy” in Germany, arguing that some 70 percent of Germans wanted a tighter immigration policy, but the country’s elected leaders had rejected this in a parliamentary debate.

“The democratic system can’t handle such a disagreement; someone has to yield, and it’s more likely that the leadership will have to adapt,” he said. He said that though the press saw AfD’s rise as a “disaster” and the rise of the “far right”, Hungary would benefit from the economic, foreign and migration policies promoted by the party. Orbán said he hosted AfD co-leader Alice Weidel in Budapest this week because she and her party “are the future”.

The European Union’s “days are numbered”

He said the European Union’s “days are numbered” unless Germany and France found a way to put the EU on a new path, adding that the bloc would serve the interests of member states well if it were well-organised.

“I still say that Hungary is better off inside [the EU], but we must see that the EU can’t survive like this,” he warned. Orbán said that without a reduction in energy prices and the establishment of a unified capital market that can keep investment money in Europe, the EU “has had it”.

He said high energy prices, which he blamed on European regulation, had put European families in a bad spot, but an even bigger problem would be the ruin of European companies. If a European company paid two to three times more for electricity and four to five times more for gas than its competitors in China and the US, “this economy will collapse”, Orbán said.

He acknowledged the impact of the war on energy prices, but also pointed to the effect of forcing the Green Deal’s energy policies on the European economy. Also, Orbán said European capital was being enticed by the continent’s global rivals and pressed for the establishment of a unified capital market as a line of defence. He said better offers had to be made for European capital and for Europe’s big companies than those from America, China and the rest of the world. This, he added, required a unified capital market.

Single European capital market

Orbán said the creation of a single European capital market was “only a matter of intention”. “If we could agree on this — which Hungary wholeheartedly supports – a capital market would be created and we’d be able to keep the resources needed to run the economy right here…” he said. “If we don’t do this, then without a reduction in energy prices and the establishment of a unified capital market that can keep investment money in Europe, the European Union has had it.”

Orbán made a case for an economic policy of connectivity, built on fostering ties. “We have to break away from European isolation and pursue a foreign trade policy that builds on connectivity and relations,” Orbán said.

He said that even though Europe “might not survive this situation”, his government had to put Hungary’s interests first, adopting an economic policy that worked if the EU was successful or not.

Hungary cannot be “at the mercy of the European economy”, he said, pointing to the need for an economic policy that mitigated the negative effects of Europe’s weakening and created opportunities in new directions.

“The future of the global economy is not being written in Europe,” he said, but in Asia, the Arab world, in emerging countries, and, with the success of Donald Trump, in the United States, he added.

Hungarian pension system “quite fair”

Orbán said the reason why the Hungarian economy could provide the standard of living to its people that it did was because the country could sell what it produces. “We have to produce, trade and sell, and this can best be done not with Europe, but with other parts of the world,” he said. This, he added, could be done by supporting business partnerships and digigalisation in the form of capital and by raising the VAT exemption threshold from annual revenue of 12 million forints to 18 million.

Meanwhile, concerning pension hikes, the prime minister said the Hungarian pension system was “quite fair”, noting that pensions would be raised in line with the inflation rate reported by the central bank at the start of the year. If inflation is overestimated, the increased pensions will remain in place, and if it is underreported, pensions will be corrected accordingly in November, he said.

Orbán said the opposition and Brussels were “constantly attacking” the Hungarian pension system. He said Brussels had called in Hungary in 2017 to carry out a pension reform, which would have resulted in scrapping the 13th month pension and raising the retirement age. “We’re constantly under pressure … to give up, change or reduce the 13th month pension, and make the system less favourable to Hungarian pensioners,” Orbán said, vowing to protect pensions.

Households also had to be protected from a push by Brussels to increase utility costs, he said, citing recent news reports that Brussels was demanding energy companies be given free reign to set prices. “If we allowed energy companies to charge the prices they want, household utility bills would be one and a half or perhaps even twice as high as they are now,” Orbán said, adding that Hungarian families were currently paying the lowest utility prices in the EU.

Read also:

• Hungary and Serbia to build joint oil pipeline – read more HERE
• Far-right AfD co-leader: Hungary and Orbán model for Germany