Orbán: Election to decide between “new” and “old” economy – Part 1
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The April 3 general election will decide whether or not “Hungary retains its new economy or we go back to the old one”, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told a conference of the Hungarian Chamber of Trade and Industry on Saturday.
Orbán said the government had completely overhauled the economy after 2010. “Our economy today is not the same” as the old one, he added.
The opposition, he said, “rejects the link between work and benefits; yet one of the greatest innovations has been to link all the money we made available to people from the economy to work.”
“We completely oppose any communist, socialist approach to economic policymaking,” he added.
Orbán stressed the importance of private property as the basis for prosperity and on which the nation could build its future. The Fidesz government “wants people to have their own homes, savings, and their own land,” he added.
He said when people owned their assets they managed them, thereby creating a different kind of culture and behaviour. “You cannot just live from hand to mouth.”
Orbán pledged that after the election “we will firmly support private property out of a philosophical conviction”.
He also vowed to sign a strategic agreement with the trade and industry chamber. “The government needs allies to ensure a social background for its policies aimed at building a stronger Hungary,” he said.
Concerning the economy, Orbán noted that a similar economic expansion to last year’s 7.1 percent had last been seen in 1977, while the rate of foreign investments in Hungary in 2021 was the second highest in the EU.