Orbán: there must always be an entity between Hungary and Russia 🔄
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Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has expressed optimism about Hungary’s economic policy for the next two years, saying the conditions for a stable policy were in place.
Hungarian economy
Speaking at an event on Monday organised by the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MKIK), Orbán said a successful economic policy required competent finance and national economy ministries as well as the backing of a commerce chamber that could cooperate effectively with the government.
He said prime ministers were responsible for making sure that economic policy “remains backed up by simple, common-sense considerations”.
One such principle, he said, was that “it is always better if others owe us than if we owe others”, and it was better to “earn more than you spend … and profit off others than have others profiting off us”.
The prime minister said cooperation between the economy and finance ministries as well as with the chamber all contributed to a stable economic policy.
Orbán noted the government was grappling with “a very high inherited debt rate”, which he said had gone from 52-53 percent to above 80 percent after the 2002 elections. The government had reined it in, he added, but “it went up again after the pandemic”.
“What’s important is that in the end, we’re lenders rather than borrowers,” he said.
Concerning the budget deficit, Orbán said “we are spending more than we earn”, and, referring to employment, he said “if we do not work we will starve to death”. All efforts must be focused on “convincing people that it is worth working”. He said that employment figures reflected the government’s successful policies in this area.
Up to 2020 Hungary was on an upward path, but then the pandemic and the war in Ukraine forced the country to “shift to lower gear” between 2020-2024, Orbán said. Now there was a chance to accelerate in 2024, he said, adding that the real economy had not suffered big problems between 2020-2024 because the government had “allowed people and businesses to make money”.
West and East
The government’s philosophy of building ties across the global economy rather than “translating an economic policy mimicking the West into primitive formulas” had also helped, he said. While the West was “stumbling”, Hungary’s eastern relations “have continued to blossom.”
Hungarian businesses are the fourth largest investor group in their own country, the prime minister said, adding that this was impressive considering “the depths from where they started”.
Meanwhile, Orbán said the economic and political map of the world “is transforming at an accelerated rate”, adding “the western and eastern parts of the world have a completely different opinion on everything”.
Referring to the war in Ukraine, he said “the West, except for the Hungarians”, had got involved in the war, while the rest of the world remained noncommittal or supported Russia. Orbán said East and West had different view on Taiwan too. “With small differences, this applies to the Middle East.” Geopolitical rivalry overrode the logic of the markets, he said. “In fact, technological developments are also determined by political considerations.”
“The outcome of the debate may be crucial,” he said, adding that “one possibility … is decoupling; that is the West separating itself from the rest of the global economy and protecting its positions because competition with the East threatens the loss of areas under Western control and even its internal markets.”
The alternative, connectivity — that is coupling East and West — could mean that “the West loses ground, but the reason for that is a lack of competitiveness; in this case, it would not attempt to use political means to stop the East from advancing but become more economically competitive,” he said.
“Europe does not even believe in its own ability to embark on internal changes … to raise the competitiveness of Western businesses to Eastern levels,” Orbán said. Should a “cold war return with decoupling”, the border between East and West would lie along Hungary’s eastern border, he insisted, adding: “We will become an uninteresting, obscure and dusty periphery of the Western world.”
With cooperation and trade, he said, Hungary would be between two worlds as a country “in which both will find opportunities”, adding that Hungarian economic policy was based on the assumption that its position between those two worlds could be maintained.
Orbán said Hungary is a part of the West, but it would not detach itself from the world’s Eastern parts, noting that Hungary is a member of the Turkic Council, cooperates with China, and it would not give up its cooperation with Russia unless the European Union’s sanctions rendered this impossible in some areas.
“West won’t win it against the Russians”
Orbán said the first lesson to be learned from the war between Russia and Ukraine was the inevitability of European rearmament.
“We don’t know how long the Americans will stay here in Europe, and we can’t guarantee our security on our own, so defence industry developments are being accelerated everywhere,” the prime minister said.
He said Hungarians’ “instincts” had been right, arguing that the country had embarked on an unprecedented military upgrade 3-4 years before the war broke out.
“So we’re ahead of everyone by 2-3 years,” Orbán said. “Politics can sometimes be a world of intuitions, not just matters of fact. This is true for both the green transition and defence industry developments.”
He said the war in Ukraine was a “proxy war”, and it was “completely obvious that the West won’t win it against the Russians”. He added, at the same time, that this was also true the other way round, and “sooner or later there will be peace talks”.
“The question is who has time on their side,” Orbán said. “We’re the only country that says that time is on the Russians’ side, so our interest lies in this conflict ending as soon as possible.”
Orbán noted, however, that “most countries in western Europe, unfortunately, believe that time is on the West’s side”. “This is an interesting train of thought if one is sitting on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean and not the Carpathian Basin.”
He said the main principle of Hungary’s security strategy was that there must always be an entity between Hungary and Russia, “and right now this is called Ukraine”.
The border between east and west is being methodically constructed by Orban on Hungary’s western border. Hungarians you best start learning Russian to succeed in Orbanistan.
The only thing that’s going to solve Ukraine is sting leader in US wheather it’s trump or someone else. It would never have happened under trump – if you look how he handled the insane leader of North Korea- the missles stopped and little has heard until the Biden regime.
The Russians are European and have little common with China and other eastern countries. Unlike the The EU who said nothing when north stream 2 was destroyed – Putin doesn’t trust the west and has plenty of reason not to.
People here think Russia is still the USSR,
Yes it was terrible what happened n Hungary but the Russian people suffered more than anyone- whipped out 3 hungarys. Russians have never been better off since Putin took over. Is been nonstop hate from western media.the EU had to know what was going on in Eukraine long before the conflict- irs shocking the role the US had in the corruption – imajine it impeached the president because he asked about it.