Orbán slams Ukraine and Brussels during EU Parliamentary Speakers’ Summit in Budapest

“If Ukraine is admitted to the European Union, war will also be admitted,” the prime minister said in Budapest at a conference of EU parliamentary speakers on Monday.

As we wrote today, EU Parliamentary leaders meet in Budapest to discuss future challenges, read details HERE.

Viktor Orbán said several EU members were for continued support to Ukraine so that that country can go on fighting. “We are of a different opinion, we think the longer the war goes on the more people will die and the worse the situation on the battlefield,” he said.

Concerning the European Commission’s proposal to make it mandatory for member states to give up Russian energy supplies, Orbán said “it would simply kill the Hungarian economy”. “Just imagine the price of energy suddenly doubling for households and companies … Hungarian families could not cope with that,” he said.

“Hungarians want peace and would get rid of the policy of economic sanctions as soon as possible,” Orbán said. Meanwhile, Orbán said the EU had never admitted a country at war “with good reason”. In addition, he said, “member states could not bear the economic burden Ukraine’s membership would pose”. He also said that the earlier accession of central and eastern European countries had benefitted the community. “But the situtation with Ukraine is different … it would be a bad deal resulting in an agricultural crisis, unemployment, indebtedness and deteriorating conditions of life,” he said.

Related article: Hungarian spy scandal in Ukraine: did Hungarian intelligence gather military data for Moscow?

Orbán: ‘More respect for national parliaments!’

Europe needs “a new strategy and strong leaders” and “more respect for national parliaments,” Orbán said. “Europe is now rich and weak, the most dangerous combination; therefore, the community needs to be reinforced,” Orbán told the conference, the closing event of parliamentary events in connection with Hungary’s EU presidency.

Europe grew strong through the emergence of nation states, and the EU became successful through cooperation between nation states, “through the strong leaders of strong national democracies,” Orbán said. The EU “owes everything to national parliaments” and “if it wants to be successful, it must pay more respect to national parliaments, which are not artificial institutions created by agreements but real bodies of popular representation, developing through an organic development,” the prime minister said.

Brussels “threatens cutting community funding for those that protect the framework of nation-states; if that does not work, it will thwart national governments, topple them, and help power agent parties ready to give up national sovereignty,” Orbán said, adding that “they are making an attempt in Hungary for the third time.”

Orbán: Western strategy to break Russia failed

Orbán compared the changes in global politics to the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, “the birth of modern nation states”. “The world is in reshuffle, the ideology of the Western world is changing, and we Europeans need to react to that,” Orbán said, and asked participants to focus on issues around national sovereignty and Ukraine’s aspirations for EU membership, adding that those subjects would “define the future of EU member states and the role of their parliaments in the next decades.”