Hungary’s bold plan: From small nation to Europe’s keystone state?
Hungary should be pursuing a strategy that can allow it to function as a “keystone state”, the prime minister’s political director said at the Tranzit festival in Tihany, on Lake Balaton, on Friday.
Whether a country becomes a keystone state depends on how it finds its role in the international world order, Balázs Orbán said in a debate with foreign policy expert István Szent-Iványi.
He said a country could become a regional keystone if it was capable of making use of world developments to become stronger economically, socially, politically and on the world stage. “If it can’t, then it blends in and is condemned to becoming a follower and running on autopilot,” Orbán said. He said the keystone state role did not depend on a country’s size or the size of its population, citing Switzerland and Singapore as examples.
Szent-Iványi said a country could only become a keystone and successful if it set an attractive example. He said the EU’s organisational culture was one of constructive and good-faith cooperation, adding, however, that he was “not seeing this from the part of the Hungarian government”.
Orbán said Hungary was living through a “good period even compared with certain eras of the 20th century”, noting the country’s strategic cooperation with the United States, China, Russia, Turkiye and the emerging Arab countries. As an EU member, Hungary also cooperates with 26 other member states in 30 policy areas on a daily basis, he added.
“We wanted to create a system — and we’re very close to establishing it — in which every great power has an interest in Hungary’s stability and success,” Orbán said. Hungary, he noted, was also involved in international organisations and partnerships.
“We are Europe, and it’s our responsibility to shape Europe, and if Europe isn’t headed in the direction that’s in our interest, we have to fight for a change in direction,” the political director said.
Concerning migration, he said the EU was facing issues on which a compromise was “logically impossible”. “Either you let them in, or you don’t. We can’t meet halfway, with Hungary taking in one in two people.”
“There are civilisational issues on which we disagree; we tolerate different opinions, and establish cooperation that ensures that all opinions can coexist,” he said. “But they want to crush our and our allies’ approach to these issues.”
Szent-Iványi said Hungary was the only EU member state that had not developed a migration policy that could be brought in line with EU migration policy. Concerning the war in Ukraine, he questioned why Hungary was so strongly opposed to the EU’s policy on Ukraine.
Orbán said the Hungarian prime minister had condemned Russia’s aggression back in 2022. He said NATO and Russia should sign a complex agreement that would lay the foundations for the security architecture of the coming decades.
He said this discussion was ongoing, but because “EU leaders aren’t at the table, and no one takes them seriously”, any agreement that was reached would be unlikely to put Europe’s interests first.
Read more EU-related news on Daily News Hungary.
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Comparing the failed State of Hungary to Switzerland and Singapore is rich indeed. What drugs do the Orban people take to even make this statement?
These delusionally grandiose statements are made for simple people in Hungary to hear and think that their government is going to achieve fantastic things even though their lives never get any better but only worse.