PM Orbán talks about uninhabitable city districts in Western Europe

With a “fearless national government” that’s willing to confront Brussels, Hungary can be secure and free of migrants, while a pro-Brussels government would ensure the opposite, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview to public radio on Friday.

Migration a cooradinated action

Asked about clashes between the police and migrants on the Roszke border crossing ten years ago, Orbán said: “Röszke has shown that migrants are not the same as refugees.”

Röszke showed that “migrants have mobile phones, they are capable of coordinated action, and their movements are more similar to military operations than that of migrants. It turns out they have bank cards and they are moved around by organised people smuggling networks, and that the network of George Soros’s NGOs stands behind them,” Orbán said.

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At the same time, Orbán said his “strongest experiences” were linked to visits at the refugee camps in Debrecen and Bicske. “When I had the migrant camp in Debrecen closed, people would have carried me on their shoulders on the main street had I let them,” he said.

Migrants inside = deteriorated security

Germany’s answer to the migration crisis had been “Wir schaffen das”, Orbán said. By now, “Germany can barely manage anything: their car industry is in ruins, China is beating them in car manufacturing, they are in debt and taking out enormous loans”. “For us Hungarians this was definitely not good, and it turns out that Germany has changed and couldn’t hack it either…”

Wherever migrants were allowed in, he said, public security deteriorated drastically, with dangerous public spaces and uninhabitable city districts where local residents “are moving out”. Orbán also mentioned the rise of criminal gangs and “open street clashes” as “unsurprising” aspects of life in western Europe.

The Western world has changed

Orbán said it was impossible to turn the clock back. “The Western world has changed and they don’t know what to do about it,” he said.

The prime minister also commented on the Swedish prime minister’s statements on Hungary, saying: “Swedes are a nice people but their politics is extremely aggressive. They lecture us and the rest of the world, and Hungarians take that badly.”

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“The Swedish government can’t lecture Hungary about the rule of law while underage girls are used for violent crimes ending in murder, while violence is rampant in Swedish cities and there were more than 300 instances of bomb-related crimes last year. They can’t even guarantee the security of their own citizens…” Orban said.

Orbán added, at the same time, that there was no across-the-board agreement on migration in Hungary, either.

This is why Fidesz left the EPP

Fidesz had quit the European People’s Party because of the issue of migration, while the opposition Tisza Party “went to” the EPP “and they obviously agreed” on the issue, he said.

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The prime minister said he did not trust anyone besides himself on the issue.

Tisza, he said, had voted in Brussels to speed up the introduction of the migration pact, “which is disastrous for Hungary”, and to increase financial support for migrants.

Meanwhile, regarding taxation, Orbán said Hungarians preferred the flat-rate tax because it cost them less than a progressive system. He said communists invented the progressive tax in the 19th century and people could look to Marx to understand its source.

Every progressive tax is “bureaucratic, cumbersome and open to con tricks”, Orbán said. The ruling parties backed a “patriotic, civic, pro-market, pro-business and pro-families tax system based on the flat-rate system and enormous tax cuts supporting children,” he said.

Tisza voters back progressive tax

The prime minister said more than half of opposition Tisza voters backed a progressive tax, while “the majority of pro-government voters and those in the middle do not want it”.

He added that Tisza and is leader could not do other than to bow to the wishes of the majority of their own voters.

“Behind it all is a question of trust,” he said, arguing that the issue was not just what people wanted but what they admitted to planning, “and the Tisza party has been given an order not to say what they are thinking and what they are planning, because then they would lose the [2026 general] election.”

“People can’t not know the consequences of their decisions; this cannot be buried,” Orbán said. “This is like the Őszöd speech, except [former Socialist PM] Ferenc Gyurcsány showed better sense to leave it to after the election to say he lied to the people, while Tisza’s people announced before the election that they would lie to the people,” he said.

The National Consultations, he added, help “to bring important issues to the surface and gives people with some kind of answer”. Tisza’s tax increases would cost a teacher an extra 364,000 forints (EUR 888) each year, he said, while doctors would be 3,172,000 forints worse off, he said.

The government, he added, did not think in terms of individuals but envisioned families, mentioning Hungary’s family tax benefits rather than entitlements as an inducement to work. “Even the most jobless group, the Roma, supports this,” he said, adding that there was a close link between the progress of the Roma community, tax allowances for children, the flat tax, and the process of becoming middle class.

Firearm scandal

Meanwhile, referring to the former chief of staff’s decision to wear a firearm at a public event, Orbán said Hungary was a state governed by the rule of law, and he could not “walk around armed and threatening people”.

Commenting on Tisza’s leader Péter Magyar who said the former chief of staff had received serious threats, yet the police had not handled he security adequately, Orbán said that if politicians carried weapons for this reason, “I would have to walk around with a cannon”.

“You can’t threaten people and shoot them just because you were a chief of staff and once a big shot,” he said. “Accept the rules: don’t walk around with a weapon, my friend.”

“And if you don’t yourself have enough sense, then the authorities will remind you. Because in Hungary, every citizen is entitled to the same rights. It is not written anywhere in the constitution or in the laws that a chief of staff can have an itchy [trigger finger]…” he added.

Pension increase

On the subject of the 1.6 percent supplementary pension increase, the prime minister noted that in 2010 the government came to an agreement with pensioners on protecting the value of pensions. Not only had the value of pensions been preserved, he said, but it had increased in recent times, while the government has reintroduced the 13th-month pension.

Orbán also said in the interview that he wanted antifa groups to be declared as terrorist organisations in Hungary.

“It is high time that organisations like antifa are considered terrorist organisations in Hungary, as they are in the US,” Orbán said in the interview to public radio on Friday, commenting on a similar initiative by US President Donald Trump earlier this week. Orbán welcomed Trump’s decision, and said he would propose Hungary “doing the same”.

Trump-Orbán friendship counts

“Antifa is just that, a terrorist organisation. They came to Hungary, beat up peaceful people on the streets, some of them they have beaten to within an inch of his life. Then MEPs went and lectured Hungary about the rule of law from the left wing. This won’t do,” he said.

Commenting on the US decision to lift visa restrictions on Hungarian citizens from Sept 30, Orbán said “friendship counts in politics”. When President Donald Trump was vying for the presidency, they had agreed “to wipe the leftist punishments against Hungary from the system”, he said.

It will take months for the decision to make its way through US bureaucracy, “but the president kept his word and has given Hungarians the opportunity of free movement and visa-free entry back,” he said.

Orbán said the Biden administration had decided to “deal us a blow” because Hungary disagreed with Democrats’ views on “migration, gender and the war”. The measure was “very unpleasant” for those studying or doing business in the US, he added.