Orbán: EU’s direction, migration bloc’s most divisive issues – UPDATE

The two issues putting Europe’s unity to the test today are migration and the direction the European Union is headed in, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said at the closing event of ruling Fidesz’s “national consultation” campaign in Budapest on Tuesday.

The prime minister said illegal migration was rightfully being called a modern-day “mass migration wave”. As regards the future of the EU, he said the question was whether the bloc was heading towards “the Europe of Brussels” or a Europe of nation states.

Orbán said both issues were of historic importance for the bloc.

He said those who are in favour of a Europe of nations are “eurorealists” rather than eurosceptics. “Eurorealists wish to build the European Union on rock solid foundations rather than on sand,” he said. The prime minister argued that the “reality of the Europe of nations” is the only such political foundation that exists today.

No nation can be dictated whom it must live together with in its own country, Orbán said, adding that this was a sovereign decision to be made by a nation alone.

He said multiculturalism had failed in Europe and the EU was now trying to get member states, including Hungary, to pay the price for it. The prime minister said the EU was trying to distribute migrants who had been unjustifiably allowed entry into western European member states among countries, such as Hungary, that had refused to let them in.

Hungary’s proposal is that rather than being distributed among member states, migrants should be moved out of Europe, he said.

Orbán also said that the “illusion of mass integration” had failed. “It’s painful to say that as good as mass integration may look on paper and in textbooks, the truth is that it doesn’t work,” he said.

Instead, parallel societies are created with rising crime rates and deteriorating public safety, the threat of terrorism and terrorist attacks, he argued.

Orbán said only Europe could decide on its own future. “And by this Europe we don’t mean Brussels or European leaders but rather the community of European citizens,” the prime minister said. “But Europe has stopped asking its people for their opinions.”

He said there was a broad consensus in Hungary on the need to protect the country’s migration policy and economic independence from EU intervention.

Assessing the results of the government’s nationwide public survey, Orban said the Hungarian people had confirmed that they want Hungary to be free to shape its own economic policy. “We must keep the regulation of taxes and energy prices in our hands and must not let these competences be transferred” to Brussels, he said.

Hungarians do not want to accept illegal migrants, “not a single one, not even temporarily or in any way at all”, he insisted. He said that “as long as there are jobless Hungarians, others should not be given employment”. He suggested that the community itself take care of “even the hardest of least appreciated work” rather than “pass on” menial jobs to immigrants. “If we want to make Hungary a strong nation we must ensure employment for everyone and appreciate any job,” Orbán added.