Viktor Orbán: ‘For us Hungary comes first’

A successful Europe does not exist without prospering nation states, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said at the general meeting of cities with county status in Veszprém, in western Hungary, on Thursday.

“The world cannot succeed without a flourishing Europe and cities also require successful villages and families to thrive,” he added. “For us Hungary comes first,” Orbán said at the meeting, telling mayors of Hungary’s largest 23 cities that their personal efforts were also needed to “enable Hungarian people to protect Hungary”.

Orbán said diversity is not a virtue but a characteristic, and something that is diverse is not necessarily also more valuable.

“We do not want to become diverse and get mixed up … with others”, he said. “We want to stay like we have been for 1,100 years here, in the Carpathian Basin,” he added.

Orbán said migration was dangerous and bad, and Hungary does not want to participate in it. “This needs to be clearly said because failing to do so will allow us to be diverted by diplomatic tricks … and we will also lose our future,” he added.

“We finally have a future, we have something to protect,” he said.

Orbán also said that rural Hungary cannot be developed without developing large cities, because if cities are weak then villages will also be weak.

After the Modern Cities scheme that covered the cities of county status, a development scheme has also been drafted for “medium-sized cities”, and villages will also be involved later, Orbán said.

At the same time, he asked local council leaders to apply for development projects only if they will be able to carry them out without getting indebted. Debt consolidation for local councils by the government was a one-off offer, he added.

The prime minister said reports that the government in office was planning to change the system of local administration was “fake news”. The constitutional foundations of local councils are firm and there are no plans to eliminate municipal governments at any level of locality, Orbán added.

Featured image: MTI

Source: MTI