PM Orbán: Budapest bridge shutdowns will be baulked, we must support Trump for peace in Ukraine

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview to public radio on Friday that the government was submitting a bill to parliament on taking into account the rights of citizens not engaged in demonstrations. “The right to assembly is important,” Orbán said. “It is good that everyone can voice their opinions, even in a forceful manner. But trapping thousands or even tens of thousands of people in traffic jams in Budapest and stopping them from in doing their jobs just because a few hundred people decide to shut down bridges and roads is not normal,” he said.
No more bridge shutdowns
“I thought the laws were clear that the right of assembly could not be exercised to impede traffic disproportionately, but a court order has allowed the closing of bridges,” he said. The prime minister noted that judges apply the laws enacted by parliament but parliament cannot instruct the courts, which are independent. But, he added, laws can be changed rendering it impossible for several bridges in Budapest to be shut down simultaneously owing to judicial decisions.
- Another right of assembly protest in Hungary, shouting “Fascist Orbán, get out!” – VIDEO and more HERE
Momentum MPs and activits tried to hinder Orbán’s interview, but the police took them away from the entrance of the MTVA.
Anti-Semitism zero toleance
Anti-Semitism is encouraged and tolerated in Western Europe owing to support for migration, while in Hungary “we have zero tolerance” for anti-Semitism, Orbán said anti-Semitism was on the rise in Western Europe every day, so people of Jewish origin were “moving away” from those places affected.
Anti-Semitism grew whenever migration increased, he said, adding that European leaders, mostly in Brussels, did not want to stop migration. So anti-Semitism was on the rise in Western Europe, whether by design or otherwise, he added. The prime minister said a country that maintained zero tolerance for anti-Semitism was an exception in Europe today, while in the West “they encourage it, tolerate it, accept it, live with it; but we don’t,” he added.

Hungary, Orbán added, had a vested interest in Israel’s stability. If there is war, uncertainty and instability in the Middle East, “we will be the victims”, he said. More than a hundred thousand people of Hungarian origin live in Israel, “and Hungary is responsible for every single one of its citizens,” Orban said. The Hungarian state “must protect all its citizens, regardless of their origins. The current government is doing just that,” he added.
Jewish community
Hungary has a significant Jewish community “that sees Israel as their second homeland, and they are not indifferent to the relations between Hungary and Israel. They see it as a matter of security, even of pride, that the two countries have good relations,” Orban said.
Meanwhile, Hungary also has an economic interest in cooperating with Israel, as thousands in Hungary are working with Israeli companies, especially in value-added tech enterprises, he said. In military cooperation, Hungary buys cutting-edge equipment from Israel, while tourism was also significant, he added, “because Israelis feel safe in Hungary”.
Netanyahu’s arrest
Meanwhile, Orbán said Hungary neither wanted to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor had the legal means to do so. Explaining the decision not to comply with the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant, Orbán said: “It is not customary to arrest guests in this country.”
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At the same time, Hungary had no will to arrest Netanyahu because “Israel is a friend”, Orbán said. “The point of foreign policy is for a country to make friends, and it is good if Israel is a friend and not an enemy of Hungary,” he added. Orbán added that arresting the Israeli prime minister was not even legally possible because the international treaty in question had not been integrated into Hungary’s legal system. “The prime minister is 1,000 percent safe in Hungary,” Orbán added.
ICC withdrawal
Regarding the decision to withdraw Hungary from the International Criminal Court, Orban said the international political arena had undergone significant changes, and a majority of international institutions “have increasingly become part of a global power system and turned against the independence of sovereign nation states”.
Those institutions overreached their powers, making politically motivated decisions, he said. “Several international institutions became political bodies, and the International Criminal Court is one of them; it is now a political court.”
Countries such as the US, Russia, China and Turkiye never became party to the agreement establishing the ICC, he said. “We can’t say the entire world was jostling to become a member of this institution.” When Hungary signed the agreement, “it was linked to the idea of Hungary finding its place in the international space after communism,” similarly to its drive to become a member of the EU and NATO, he said.
Hungary was half-hearted when joined ICC
“Hungary has always been half-hearted on the matter, because it did not integrate the international agreement into Hungarian law … it did not take all the steps to ensure that the agreement was enforceable in Hungary.”
Economic goals
Regarding this year’s plans, Orbán said the government had five economic and five political goals. The economic plans include “breaking down prices, an action plan on the largest tax cut in Europe, the 100 factories programme, the Demjan Sandor Programme supporting SMEs, and a scheme to return VAT on foodstuffs to pensioners,” he said.
He said the government’s main economicaly related programmes were the referendum on Ukraine’s EU membership, abolishing foreign political donations, bolstering child protection, en economic development scheme targeting villages and small towns and a crackdown on drugs.
“These ten things are certain to happen this year because the government is working to make sure it does,” Orbán said, adding that he had taken personal responsibility for these measures. Under the government’s economic plan, he said, the economy is seen growing by 0.7-0.8 percent in the first quarter, 1.5 percent by the end of the second quarter, 3 percent by the end of Q3, reaching 3.5 percent for the full year.
Jobs for the Roma community
“The key to all of this is jobs, because if we have jobs we have everything,” he said, adding that employment was at an all-time high, with even more room for growth. He said this was also an opportunity for the country’s Roma community, pointing out that never before had the labour market managed to integrate as many Roma entrepreneurs and workers as it has recently. Orbán underscored the importance of maintaining a high employment rate, noting that Roma people tended to be the first ones to lose their jobs when the labour market shrank.
“So the 4.7 million jobs are important,” Orbán said, adding that plans included increasing this to 5 million jobholders.
Trump peace plans should be backed
As regards Hungary’s international responsibilities, Orban said Hungary’s only task on the international stage was to support US President Donald Trump’s peace plan and negotiations. “If there’s anyone who can achieve peace, it’s him. And since we want peace, our job isn’t to hinder, criticise or obstruct him, but to support him,” Orbán added.
Western Europe, he said, disagreed. “First of all, they clearly hate the US president and would not be at all upset if he saw failure, because right now he’s having tremendous success,” Orbán said. “Also, the western Europeans haven’t prepared a major peace plan as we Hungarians have, but rather a war plan,” he said.
Strong military based on powerful economy
Orbán said that while bolstering defence capabilities was the right thing to do, “the point of this isn’t to constantly maintain wartime tensions”. “It’s better to have peace achieved under the leadership of the US president, and in the meantime we should boost our own defence capabilities and our economy, because all military capabilities are based on economic strength,” he said. Orbán added that poor countries never have a strong military.
Orbán added that Trump’s efforts already guaranteed that the war “won’t spread in our direction, towards Western Europe”. “The US president has already managed to isolate this conflict, and now it’s about securing a ceasefire, not least because a few dozen people are dying on the frontlines as we speak.”
Price increases brutal
Meanwhile, Orbán said recent price increases in three areas were having a significant impact on Hungarian families. “These are extremely distressing things,” he said. The first area, he said, was the rise in food prices, where intervention was needed most quickly because “we have to eat and we couldn’t wait here”, he said.
The second area was services, where the price of telecommunications services had risen to a large extent, he said. Orbán said serious discussions had taken place here in recent times. He said he was confident that unlike the food sector, where agreements would have had to be reached with thousands of traders, an agreement would be reached with the three major companies in the sector.
The prime minister identified banking services as the third area where prices have risen sharply. Orbán said he believed there was a realistic chance of an agreement and the government’s demand for prices of banking services not to increase in the future was legitimate.
Orbán also mentioned his visit to Tarnazsadany, in northern Hungary, earlier this week, saying it was a “rough area” whose residents were having to suffer the consequences of drug deals that “often ruin the families who live there”.
Manhunt for drug traffickers
The “manhunt” for drug traffickers is under way, he declared, thanking the police for their efforts. He said public safety in Hungary was in an “encouraging state” by European standards. “I won’t say it’s perfect, but by European standards we’re among the best. Perhaps we are even the best, so we have good police officers, which was again made clear,” he added. As part of more than 1,000 operations mobilising more than 3,500 police officers, several hundreds of kilograms of drugs have been seized and traffickers arrested, he said.
The government has submitted to parliament the necessary draft amendments “to show the police as well as people that their work makes sense and that people detained in operations to eliminate drug networks will get proper and severe punishment,” Orbán said. “We must demonstrate to social groups committed to eliminating drugs — to teachers, parents and policemen — that their work makes sense … by taking the traffickers out of circulation and seizing the drugs.”
The use of “forceful terms such as manhunt” is also meant to show that the government maintains zero tolerance, and work will continue until the network is eliminated, “even if that may take many long months,” he said. Orbán said the constitution will state that the amendment includes the prohibition of the production, distribution, use and promotion of drugs in Hungary.
He said that whereas it would still be illegal to use drugs in Hungary, the law would give first-time offenders who agree to participate in a drug withdrawal education programme the option of avoiding punishment, while a second offence would carry a sentence.
He said there was no sense in acting as if drug use were a “forgivable crime” in Hungary. For now, however, it was dealers who were being targeted rather than users, he said, adding that if the drugs were taken away, then there would be no drug addicts either.