PM Orbán: Hungary will enter a new era of growth in 2025, 4th CPAC Hungary will be in May

The average monthly wage is set to reach one million forints, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview to public radio on Friday, adding that it was “encouraging” that 4,000 teachers already earned more than that amount. Orbán also spoke about protecting the 13th month pension and strengthening the middle class.

Era of peace

He said “the people who actually run the economy believe that we’re at the point where serious things can get done” and “the economy will lift off”. Orbán said the economic data was improving in light of Donald Trump’s election win, and an “era of peace” that would follow the war in Ukraine, which he said was in its final stages. The prime minister said that in times of war economic players showed caution, but it would be possible to take risks and get businesses going again.

He said the “American tailwind” had started this process last year, and this year especially it would “billow into Hungary’s economic sails”. The prime minister hailed the fact that 800,000 people had invested in government securities, adding that a tenth of total Hungarian savings, 90,000 billion forints, were invested in this way. Fully 50,000 people were invested with less than 1 million forints, so it was not only the rich who were attracted to government securities, he said, adding that 191,000 had 1-5 million, 117,000 had 5-10 million and 121,000 had between 10 and 25 million forints invested.

Orbán said that broadening the middle class was the best remedy against poverty and “a realistic objective”. He said growth would take off in the fourth quarter and the economy would pick up even further next year. “If we can mobilise the money of private individuals, we can have a fantastic year,” Orbán said.

Politics should be about everyday life and opportunities

The prime minister said the focus would be on the middle class and those in a worse position, adding that “this is called a people’s party politics”. US President Donald Trump won the election on such a political platform, he said, adding that “Western politics are narrowing down to issues around everyday life and opportunities.” The economy, he said, was about “making people’s lives better”, and “the life of the majority of Hungarians is a middle-class life”.

As many people as possible should own a property, be “self-sufficient”, and support their families through work, he said. Orbán said the rate of economic growth would not quicken steadily, but pick up in the third and fourth quarters, though, but compared with previous years, “the first and second quarters will also be nice”. By the the second half of 2025 it would be clear that Hungary will have “properly entered a new era of growth”, he said.

On the topic of pensions, he declared: “Hands off pensions and the 13th month pension”, referring to “those in Brussels [who] want to take the 13th month pension away”. “Economists who back the opposition parties keep on saying that the 13th month pension is not right,” Orbán said. But the pensions “must be protected”, and the government had saved them so far and “will insist” on doing so in the future too.

13th month pension remains

The 13th month pension “is a spiritual, psychological, political, and only lastly an economic issue,” he added. “If we want to forge a victorious nation … we must resolve old problems,” he said, adding that one of those old problems was the previous Socialist government’s elimination of the 13th month pension. Securing the extra month’s pension was more than a simple matter of “finding around 500 billion forints for it”, he added.

Orbán noted that wages were growing faster than pensions, and the 13th month pension would help narrow the gap. Meanwhile, the prime minister said that the European Commission has given Hungary guarantees that Russian gas will again flow through Ukrainian pipelines, but if the commission reneges on the deal then “sanctions will end” when they are scheduled to roll over in six months, Orbán said. “We will cancel them,” he declared.

He said Hungary would be seen as “cowards” if it did not follow through in blocking sanctions in six months’ time in the event the commission failed to honour the agreement, and Hungarians would “continue to pay the price of sanctions”. “While we finance their war and provide money for the running of their country”, Ukraine takes measures that “make the lives of Europeans, including Hungarians, harder”, he said, adding that Ukraine was “shameless”.

Americans want peace, that is why they want sanctions: those are the “good sanctions”

The prime minister said that Europeans wanted “sanctions instead of peace”, while “Americans want peace”, and sanctions were one way of achieving peace. But, he added, Hungary never backed sanctions and simply acknowledged that 26 out of 27 EU countries voted for sanctions. “Since Hungary doesn’t want to leave the European Union and doesn’t want to constantly block everything, it has consistently said that this is against its interests but will not veto it, otherwise Europe’s machinery would be paralysed,” he said.

“If it is absolutely necessary, Hungary could say that everybody should go home … and the sanctions are over. That would be a drastic thing and must only be used as a last resort,” he said. “Hungary has no problem with the philosophy of sanctions but with their impact on the Hungarian economy,” the prime minister added. Concerning Germany, Orbán said “it is in fact Brussels that is destroying Germany”, noting punitive tariffs on Chinese cars imposed to protect European car makers as an examples. “German car factories are protesting and suing the European Commission,” he said.

“Hungary cannot always eradicate the impact of Brussels’ mistakes but we can find something to mitigate them and compensate for them, but the Germans are traditionally pro-Brussels and if Brussels pursues an ill-advised economic policy, they can hardly protect themselves,” Orbán said.

Brussels using cunning tricks

Unless the great western European states “regain their independence and put their foot down” and “the bureaucratic elite goes on telling what is correct, sitting in their bubble, the economies of the large European countries may not have a great future,” Orbán said.

“You cannot negotiate with those in Brussels because they use all kinds of cunning tricks; you have to rebel against them,” he said, adding that “Germans have started rebelling over migration and a moment may come when there is rebellion in the economy, too.”

He said connectivity — cooperation with China, South Korea, Japan, Turkiye, and the Arab world — was crucial for Hungary because “unless we cooperate with parts of the world developing faster than Europe and fail to incorporate their resources into the Hungarian economy, we could be on the losing side,” Orbán said.

Concerning the year to come Orbán said he expected a continuous fight with Brussels bureaucrats because “though the battle has been won in America and they now have a government serving the interests of the people, bureaucrats in Brussels will not change and continue to abuse their power.” He said conflicts could be expected “in 7-8 areas” including Hungary’s child protection law, the government’s utility cap programme, as well as a lawsuit the European Parliament initiated in an effort to make Hungary repay community funding it has already received.

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