Minister Gulyás: Hungary wants to stay out of Ukraine war

Hungary wants to stay out of the Russia-Ukraine war and does not want to participate in the NATO mission in Ukraine either, the head of the Prime Minister’s Office said on Thursday.

Gergely Gulyás told a government press briefing that the government would make every effort to ensure that Hungarian soldiers and weaponry would not be sent to Ukraine.

The government maintains its position that the war cannot be resolved on the battlefield and NATO should focus all its efforts on activating an immediate ceasefire and starting peace talks as soon as possible, he added.

He said at Wednesday’s cabinet meeting the war situation was evaluated as having taken a more serious turn. New details revealed about NATO’s plans carried the risk of the alliance intervening directly in the war, he added.

The Government Information Centre (KTK) will send a “factual report” on war-related developments to members of the public, he added.

Gulyás: Hungary doesn’t want to participate in NATO’s mission in Ukraine

Gulyás said NATO’s Ukraine mission would involve military training and the coordination of weapon deliveries, as well as 100 billion US dollars of spending on the war in the next five years. The expectation that the war may last another five years was reason for concern in itself, he said, but the expectation that all NATO members should participate and “massive pressure” on Hungary to support the alliance’s plans were even more worrying, he said.

Gulyás said NATO may consider a member state to be under attack in the absence of an actual conflict on the ground if it were “directly threatened”. Such “moves and plans” had been mobilised, he said.

He said that at the same time Hungary, as “a loyal ally”, would work to keep NATO from at all intervening in the conflict. Failing that, Hungary would do everything in its power to stay out of any future military missions in Ukraine, he said.

Gulyás said Hungary was a loyal NATO ally and among those countries to have raised defence spending to 2 percent of GDP.

He said that at the same time “peace must be served”, and the government was developing the Hungarian armed forces with a view to guaranteeing the security of its own citizens and NATO as a whole, he said, adding that investments in defence were not about engaging “in missions that threaten to trigger a world war between nuclear powers”.

Gulyás said the alliance’s leadership was likely to work towards a compromise before its meeting in Washington, DC over the summer.

On the subject of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s current visit to Hungary, Gulyás said Xi’s decision to visit Paris and Budapest was a sign of Hungary’s growing weight in the world. He slammed international media for employing “double standards” by “painting the visit to Paris as right and that one to Budapest as wrong”.

Gulyás noted that Chinese GDP, which was 20 years ago one-fifth of the EU’s, has surpassed that of the entire bloc by now, and this showed the EU’s slipping competitiveness and China’s “enormous journey in economic growth”.

In 2004 only fifteen of the world’s largest companies were Chinese; that number grew to 135 by 2023, Gulyás said. The country single-handedly produces 18 percent of the world’s GDP, he said.

Gulyás said it was in Hungary’s interest to attract as much Chinese investment as possible.

Hungary pursues the principle of connectivity in international cooperation, and the government would like to be able to conclude mutually beneficial deals on the highest-quality products possible, he said.

While four-fifths of Hungary’s investments come from Europe, it welcomes companies from all over the world, including the US and South Korea, he said, adding that all investments that created jobs and brought capital to the country were in Hungary’s interest and contributed to growing wages here.

The government reached its economic goal for 2023 and broke “war inflation”, as inflation fell to 3.6 percent in March, Gulyás said, adding that 2024 would be the year of “re-starting the economy”.

Commenting on economic indicators for the first quarter, he said goals for 2024, too, had been fulfilled so far, “despite the war environment dampening European growth”.

GDP grew by an annual 1.7 percent in the first quarter, and by 0.8 percent quarter on quarter, putting Hungary among the fastest growing EU member states, he said. Annual growth is the third highest in the EU, while quarter-on-quarter growth is the second highest, he said.

He said forecasts were less certain as long as the war in Ukraine was still ongoing, adding, however, that the 2.5 percent growth forecast for 2024 and the 4.1 percent growth projected for next year were “realistic” despite the current circumstances.

Gulyás welcomed the incipient recovery in consumption and the increase in retail sales in the first three months of 2024, following 13 consecutive months of decline.

In the tourism sector, commercial and private accommodations registered 7.1 million guest nights in the first quarter, a 14 percent increase compared with the same period last year, with the number of foreign guests rising by 18 percent to 2.9 million, he said.

Gulyás also said more than one million more people had jobs than during the Fidesz government’s left-wing predecessor, while the minimum wage has grown 3.5-fold and the average wage 3-fold since then.

Government spokesperson Eszter Vitályos said more than 3,100 families have applied for over 83 billion forints in CSOK Plusz home purchase subsidies so far, with the applications averaging 26 million forints. More than 35 billion forints had been awarded to more than 1,400 families by the end of March, she added.

Meanwhile, she said more than 210 billion forints-worth of developments have been carried out across the country, of which 180 billion has gone towards public road upgrades.

In connection with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit, Gulyás said China’s economy is the world’s second largest, and it had a good chance of becoming its strongest within a decade.

“China needs markets … and it is interested in having as many capital investments as possible in EU countries. Adopting an anti-China position deteriorates the EU’s competitiveness,” he said, noting that China’s economy in the past two years grew by 700 percent, as against 80 percent in the US and 30 percent in the EU.

Asked whether Chinese companies would contribute to the Paks nuclear power plant expansion, he noted that besides the Russian contractor, US, German, and French companies were involved in the project, and China was not expected to have any significant role.

Asked about the issue of freedom of speech in connection with an incident involving “Chinese people wearing red caps” who had questioned an opposition Momentum MP regarding an EU flag as well as the concealment of a Tibetan flag during the presidential visit, Gulyás said an investigation should first ascertain “if such things in fact happened”, adding that only Hungarian police had such powers in the country.

Regarding the war in Ukraine and China’s related peace plan, he said Hungary alone could not establish peace, and the US and China would have an important say. “We can encourage them to do as much as possible towards attaining an immediate ceasefire and peace,” he said, adding that “war psychosis”, led by the Polish government, was growing.

Gulyás said Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was considering whether to participate in a peace summit to be held in Switzerland in mid-June at the initiative of the Ukrainian president. He said a peace summit without both warring parties present “would have not much point”, adding that progress could not be made before the parties sat down and negotiated a ceasefire. He added that he saw no chance off Orbán and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meeting before the European parliamentary elections.