On Friday morning, Viktor Orbán gave an interview on Kossuth Radio’s “Good Morning, Hungary!” program. The Prime Minister spoke about the economic outlook of the EU and Hungary, the upcoming European summit in Budapest, and the latest government decisions.
Viktor Orbán held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron this week. In this context, he said that “we are not talking about a specific Hungarian point of view when we talk about the difficulties of the European economy, but about a shared opinion, which is also admitted by the leaders.” The Prime Minister noted that the French President was playing a key role in the process of creating a new, more competitive European economy.
He stressed that French President Emmanuel Macron and former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi had recently made much stronger, harsher statements about the state of public finances in Europe. He added that the French President had said the European Union would die if it did not urgently improve its competitiveness.
Now the Hungarians are no longer the only ones in the crowd who see that the king is naked, now there are more and more of them,”
he pointed out.
Mr. Orbán said that Hungary will host the Western world’s summit on November 7, and that he had discussed this with the French president during their meeting. Forty states will take part in the forthcoming European Political Community Summit in Budapest, which will focus on the competitiveness of the EU economy.
The Prime Minister recalled that during the period of regime change (end of the communist rule in Hungary in 1989) it became clear that the economy built up in the Soviet-dominated part of the world was not competitive. In the 1990s and 2000s, Hungary therefore adopted the methods of capitalism and the market economy that had made Western countries successful. However, the Prime Minister noted that today the Western world is in trouble and losing competitiveness. At the same time, he added, we cannot adopt in Hungary the economic methods of the East, which now seem to be more successful than ours, because they cannot be copied.
The only solution, he continued, is to create an economic model from the examples known in the world that can be “tailored” to the Hungarian people and is compatible with their culture.
Thus, we have to take everything that is good from the West and everything that is good from the East (…). For the sake of simplicity, let me describe this way of thinking and policy as economic neutrality, which means that Hungary must go its own way,”
he explained.
Mr. Orbán said that if we managed to stay out of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the country could also stay out of a bad economic policy based on a flawed war logic. He added that to do this, one has to be good at “difficult negotiations in the closed, back rooms of politics, but the Hungarians have never been bad in this respect.”
Turning to European Parliament matters, the Prime Minister said that a decision had been taken in Brussels, with the European People’s Party (EPP) at the helm. “They said it is over, Prime Minister, you and your government can go, and here is the new future Prime Minister and the new future governing party, and we in Brussels support him,” he said.
He stressed that they need a puppet government, “all empires are like that, the Soviets were like that.” Brussels also want a “jawohl government:” a phone call from Brussels or Berlin and we have to say “jawohl” (Yes, sir!), he said. However, he added that
this is not simply a question of power, because Brussels has disputes with Hungary on economic policy and “people would be seriously hurt if we gave in, if we had given in.”
The question is not who is prime minister, but what the consequences will be for the people, he emphasized.
On Hungary’s economic situation, he said that “if we stand on the ground of economic neutrality, the action plan we have put together could bring fantastic results in 2025 and economic growth that exceeds that of any other European country.” The Prime Minister noted that it is also in our vital economic interest to have a U.S. government that says that this war cannot go on. “If we have that, then it is our turn: we have put together the package that will finally get the Hungarian economy out of the difficult period since 2020,” Viktor Orbán concluded.
Via MTI, Featured image: MTI/Miniszterelnöki Sajtóiroda/Fischer Zoltán