12,000 Hungarians rally for their own way forward as “EU pressures mount”
Europe needs strong and successful nations to meet the challenges facing the bloc, the prime minister’s political director told public broadcaster Kossuth Radio on Sunday, highlighting the first national convention of Digital Civic Circles, attended by 12,000 supporters.
“Countless artists, sports people, scientists and public figures made a statement for cooperative thinking and conservative Christian values,” Balázs Orbán said, referring to the meeting held on Saturday.
Concerning the challenges such as the war in Ukraine, illegal migration, the green transition and Europe’s competitiveness, Orbán said “Brussels, the European Union’s liberal headquarters, has its own proposals … but those invariably fail, and more and more people in Hungary think that if we accept those, Hungary could find itself on a downward path and the situation could become worse and worse.”
He said the Digital Civic Circles movement had been launched “to find a specific Hungarian way” and come up with “a specific Hungarian approach to keep the country on an upward path”.
Concerning the government’s new National Consultation public survey, starting on 1 October, Orbán said that voters would be asked five questions on issues around the public burden, adding that the actual questions would be published in the next few days.
“The EU’s leadership is committed to continuing the war against Russia, and they think the focus in the next 10 years should be on preparations for the war and supporting Ukraine,” Orbán said, adding that the EU was pressing member states “to increase taxes and collect more money from their citizens” to that end.
“We in Hungary would not want to see a higher tax burden nor to send more money to the headquarters in Brussels … to finance Ukraine,” Orbán said. “We must reject plans by the [opposition] Tisza Party to raise taxes.”
Orbán suggested that “it is not just the demands of an opposition party”, but the leadership of the EU was pushing the Hungarian government “to take those tax hike measures”. “We think that we will only be able to withstand [that pressure] if we ask Hungarian voters in a National Consultation and fight the battles ahead reinforced by their opinion,” the political director said.
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