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Zsolt Törőcsik: European leaders gathered in Budapest yesterday for the Western world’s most important meeting, and today European Union leaders will continue their discussions. The talks are particularly important because they come just days after Donald Trump was re-elected President of the United States. I welcome Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to the studio. Good morning.
Good morning to your listeners.
Yesterday, after the summit, you said that the world will change faster than we think. Good examples of this, by the way, are that there’s a new President of the United States and the German government has fallen – all this happening within 24 hours. Yesterday, how much openness to adapting to this rapidly changing world did you see from the leaders of a wider Europe?
This is a difficult thing. If you’ve spent two years trying to convince the world that war is good, peace is bad, sanctions are good, politicians who speak against sanctions are stupid, and if you’ve said that in reality those who want peace want something that’s unjust, then it’s difficult to suddenly change course when the whole world has been listening to you for years – and perhaps in large part has even believed you. So we’re in a difficult, uncomfortable situation that’s hard to resolve, because everyone knows that the last two years have done enormous damage to the whole world, to Europe and to Hungary. I’m talking about the two years of war. And everyone knows that if Donald Trump had won in the United States in 2020, then these two years – these two nightmare years – would never have happened: there would have been no war, because America would have had a strong leader who would have concluded the necessary agreements in good time. This failed to happen, and for this we’re now paying – or have paid – a terrible price in the last two years. And the Europeans have supported this evil – with the exception of one or two people, apart from a few of us, with the Slovaks worth mentioning here, and the Vatican, too. Now it’s over, because the American victory is a huge victory. It’s such a great victory that it can be seen not only from the Moon, but also from Mars. And it’s clear that if the new American president wants peace instead of war, anti-migrant policies instead of migration, and pro-family policies instead of gender, this will leave its mark on the world. And we Europeans have to respond somehow. Let’s put aside gender and migration for the moment, because war is perhaps the hottest potato – as they say in America: so we have to do something about it, but now we’re throwing it from one hand to the other. The situation on the front is obvious: a military defeat. The Americans will pull out of this war. First of all they won’t encourage the war, they won’t say that the war is a good thing. A lot of things are said about Donald Trump, including by those who don’t like him, but there’s one thing that no one questions: that he won’t start a war. So he’s a man who hates war, a real businessman who thinks that life and things go well when there’s no war. So this is a new situation, and it will affect us Europeans too on the other side of the ocean. Europe cannot finance this war alone. There are those who still want to, who still want to send huge amounts of money into this war that’s being lost. But there’s a growing number of people who first of all are remaining silent, although they were previously vocal; and then there’s a growing number of people who are cautiously suggesting that perhaps we should adapt to the new situation. And here we are, those of us who have always said this, and we’re saying, “Well, you see, the moment has come, now let’s leave the past behind, however it was, and as a matter of urgency let’s adapt and switch from war to peace.” This is the process that’s happening now. It’s this process that made this meeting in Budapest – the biggest diplomatic event in Hungary’s history – so exciting. Now perhaps I can also thank the people of Budapest for putting up with it. There’s still half a day to go, so please hold on. I can thank those – we’re talking about hundreds of people – who have worked to make this happen. We Hungarians are very strong in organisation. We also organise international sporting events flawlessly, and here too everything’s going like clockwork. Well, I’ve seen some big diplomatic meetings at which chaos was the order of the day. That hasn’t been the case here. Here everything has been disciplined, controlled and on time. So hats off to our staff – we can be proud of them. Now everyone will leave here having been in a fantastic country, having been in a great city, having been with a great people. What’s important isn’t the size today, but the history; and the leaders coming here understand history. They’ve seen the Parliament, they’ve seen this city, they understand that here is the accumulation of a thousand years, and that they’ve been guests of a great culture. So I think that everyone who’s taken part in this has, in just a few days, done a great deal to increase the recognition of Hungary and respect for it in the world.
If we go back to what’s been said and to the Russo–Ukrainian war, President Zelenskyy of Ukraine was also here. Despite what he’s just said, he rejected a ceasefire and said that anyone proposing one doesn’t want to see Ukraine in NATO. How can this happen in this context, when one of the warring parties says that peace requires strength, and that any kind of peace must be attained through the language of strength?
I think it’s a good idea if you’re strong – indeed if you’re the stronger one; but if the other side is stronger, it doesn’t seem like a good idea. But that’s not my business – it’s the business of the Ukrainians, who have fought heroically over the past two years. So I’m not one of those people who would belittle or downplay the heroic struggle put up by the Ukrainians. Whether their leaders have turned the country’s wheels in the right direction isn’t for us Hungarians to decide, but for the Ukrainians to decide. All I can say is that four months ago I was in Kyiv/Kiev, I was in Moscow, I spoke to the Chinese president, the Turkish president, the US president – who was still called Biden – and Donald Trump. I wrote a report for the European prime ministers, and they all received it. Based on my communication, I described what was going to happen. We’re now exactly where we could have predicted we’d be. So there’s no reason for any leader to say that they’re surprised, that they didn’t expect this; because as a result of the Hungarian peace mission everything was exactly foreseeable. And it’s not because we’ve got this gift of foresight or we’re good at lotteries or gambling and we hit on the answer; it’s that if you communicate, you understand what’s going to happen. Europe’s biggest problem now is that they’re not talking to the people they need to talk to. So if you don’t go to Moscow, if you don’t go to Kyiv/Kiev or to Beijing, if you don’t see Donald Trump as a future US president but instead criticise him and look down on him and are against him, how are you going to put together your plan for the future? In politics this is a luxury you don’t have. And now we’re here, having failed to prepare for this – apart from Hungary, practically no one has prepared for this. But Hungary is well prepared, and it’s perhaps worth saying a few words about that. And now we have to quickly make important decisions in a short time, at the risk of making mistakes. But we’ve come together to help one another make the right decisions.
Since you’ve mentioned that Hungary’s well prepared, in the current situation what advantage, if any, can come from that?
Oh, when we talk about the US president and the war it may seem that we’re talking about world politics, but in fact we’re talking about Hungarian households. So there’s a very direct correlation between the big changes that are happening in the world and the money in people’s pockets, family budgets and the economic prospects for the coming year. These are very obvious connections. Our biggest problem is the war. If there had been no war, or if it had ended sooner, inflation wouldn’t have gone as high as it has, energy prices wouldn’t be where they are, there wouldn’t have been sanctions, a lot of trade and relationships wouldn’t have been disrupted, and economies across Europe would be in much better shape. Now, we knew, didn’t we, that there were two options: either the Democrats would win or President Trump would win. And we also knew that if the Democrats won, then this misery would continue, and then Hungary would have to prepare a wartime budget for next year. And then we wouldn’t need to spend 2 per cent of gross domestic product on the military, but 3 or 4 per cent – in a forced and rapid manner. And we also knew that if President Trump won, we could prepare a peace budget. We’ve also changed the legislative order, because in Hungary Parliament usually passes the following year’s budget on 1 July. I asked Parliament not to do that now, but to give us more time, wait for the US election, ascertain whether 2025 would be a year of peace or a year of war – and now there’s a good chance that it will be a year of peace – and allow us to present a budget accordingly, as and when we need it. We’ve now submitted a peacetime budget. We can do things in the coming year that we could hardly have thought of a few months ago. The fact that we’re launching this Sándor Demján Programme and that small entrepreneurs are getting help on an unprecedented scale is directly linked to the opportunities in world politics. The fact that we’re taking very important steps towards cheaper housing is, again, because international political changes have created the opportunity for this. Likewise, we want to increase the purchasing power of wages in the coming year. So we don’t simply want to survive the coming year but to grow, to improve the situation, for people of my age as well as for young people – and so we’ll also be able to make the thirteenth month’s pension a permanent feature. So all of this will be possible because the situation in world politics has developed in the way it has, and because we Hungarians have bet on the right horse – but in reality this wasn’t a bet, as we understood what was going to happen and we prepared for it. This is why we have a 21-point economic action plan. So we have the economic philosophy of economic neutrality, we have a new economic policy that’s already adapted to these changes, and we have a 21-point action plan that will have a positive impact on people’s daily lives. It’s no exaggeration to say that 2025 will be a fantastic year, because the conditions for it exist in the world.
The room for manoeuvre on the policy of economic neutrality could be increased or reduced by the next Trump presidency, because the potential horror of a trade war with China was already with us under the previous Trump administration.
This is strange. I listen to analysts and I talk to intelligent people, because you have to get thoughts from somewhere related to what they think about this situation. And it’s interesting how strongly entrenched in the minds of even the most sophisticated people is this mentality of “we have to stand somewhere”. So we have this US–China situation. Obviously there are disputes, there have been, and there will be. And then they say, “But it will be difficult for us, because we have to decide whether to stand here or there.” But in reality what we want is the same as what the Americans want. What do Donald Trump and the Americans want? They want a good deal with the Chinese. So they don’t want to push the Chinese off the Earth and into space. That’s hardly possible, but they’re here, they’re strong, they’re developing, and the task is to make good agreements with them. Then, after much debate they’ll come to an agreement. But we want exactly the same: we just want good agreements with the Chinese. Everyone wants the same thing, so it’s not necessary to side with one or other of the disputing parties. Why don’t we take our own side? We’re Hungarians. We have Hungarian interests. For us the Hungarian people are what’s important. We must do what’s in the Hungarian interest. This is how we must conduct our politics, in the West and in the East. So I’m always amazed that even very serious people are unable to take Hungarian self-interest as their starting point, always wanting to align themselves with someone else, wanting to be linked to someone else, they want to hitch their wagon to someone else. I don’t think that’s possible. So if we want to do serious things, if we want to develop, if we want to make the quality of our lives dependent on our own performance, then we must accept that we are Hungarians with our own interests, and we’ll find our way in the political universe on the basis of these interests – not by tying our interests to others, but by starting out from our own interests. Some people say that this isn’t possible, because we’re too small. I’ve never believed that. One, we’re not small, this is a big nation; and two, I’ve seen successful countries of this size which have been clever in making friends in the world just for their own interests and then turning that to their economic advantage. The fact that today Hungary has a friend in the President of the United States is an economic opportunity for the country that it’s never had before.
To what extent can this attitude help us find a market for goods produced in Hungary? because last week we were talking about the GDP data, and about the fact that now the biggest problem – or what seems to be the biggest problem – is that there’s nowhere to sell the goods produced in Hungary. And it seems as if this is also reflected in the industrial production data published last week.
This is the problem, the challenge, the problem that we have to solve. But we’re prepared for it. So the trends we’re seeing now aren’t coming out of the blue. More precisely, if people ask themselves why they keep politicians, beyond the fact that they’re there to make tax laws and all sorts of rules and regulations, they’ll probably be able to give a sensible answer: in a society – especially in a nation like Hungary, which is the creator of a state – there’s a division of labour, and in the Hungarian world there must be people whose job it is to try to understand the future. These are the politicians. Now, this is not always apparent to us, because in the world of all the daily pushing and shoving and sniping and slapping, and the real-time world of the internet, where everything happens instantly, this is like a peepshow: we want to peep in, but it doesn’t look like there are thinking people here. But politicians are supposed to think all day about what’s going to happen, to understand what’s ahead. This isn’t impossible, but it just takes a lot of work. It’s an intellectual activity. And once they understand what’s going to happen, then they should make action plans. They’ll make plans, implement the plans and tell people what’s going to happen. This is so that our people can prepare, so that even in the most remote house in the most remote village everyone can know what’s going to happen – and this is why we need to speak intelligently and clearly. This is so that when they make their own decisions, when they plan their own lives, when they think about the future of their families, they can put it all into the larger context and know what they have to take into account in their own personal lives. This is supposed to be our job. This is what I work on, and now I can say that we’ve understood what the future holds. I think we’ve put good plans in place, and we’ll implement them next year, in 2025. There are huge opportunities for people, many more opportunities than in the last two years, when we were weighed down by war.
We’ve moved off the subject of the EU, but now let’s return to it in the economic context, because today the EU heads of state and government are meeting, and here a competitiveness issue will be on the table. Here there are already plans, or at least good analyses for understanding the problem have emerged; but when it comes to implementation, what can the implementation of these be? Can there be a coherent response at EU level?
There should be, but not yet. Europe’s not yet ready – either intellectually or politically – to take the decisions that are needed now. There’s a very intense debate ahead of us, so the next two or three hours will be very exciting from Hungary’s point of view and from an intellectual point of view. I encourage anyone who’s interested in this kind of thing and who wants to participate in the process of understanding the future to do so; it’s not exclusively our task, because everyone can participate in political thinking, anyone who wants to, and now the modern tools are available for that. So what we’re facing in the next two or three hours will be intellectually fascinating. Our guest will be Mario Draghi, who was President of the European Central Bank, later Prime Minister of Italy; I met him yesterday in preparation for his presentation today. So we invited him to the prime ministers’ round table and he put together an overview of what’s wrong with the European economy, which is the result of months of work. It’s much more depressing than what I sometimes tell you here about how the European economy is in decline. So he describes how European competitiveness has deteriorated. As a polite man, he describes how it’s deteriorated, and of course there are always bad decisions behind the deterioration. So he says how it’s deteriorated, and that urgent action is needed. He talks about many things, and we’ll talk about many things today, but the heart of the problem is very simple. After all, according to martial arts masters, simplicity is at the highest level of knowledge. The heart of Europe’s competitiveness problems is that today a European entrepreneur or company pays four times as much for natural gas as an American in the same industry, and three times as much for electricity. And until this is resolved, it won’t matter what we talk about here; this is a competitive disadvantage which, if we don’t remedy it, means that we won’t be able to make any good decision that can compensate for and correct this broken system of price relations. So we need to find a new European regulation, we need a completely new energy regulation that doesn’t destroy European businesses, and therefore doesn’t destroy families. We’re also always cussing of course, because when you see a bill, your first reflex is: What’s this? But if a Hungarian were to compare his or her own gas and energy bills with those of, say, a Western country, even though they earn more there, then he or she would really cuss. So the fact that gas and electricity are the cheapest for families in Hungary is a huge competitive advantage for Hungary – which you can’t assess unless you step out into the international arena. The others are suffering much more than we are. So I’d just like to say that the others also ought to pay attention to the Hungarian solutions on how to address Europe’s disproportionate energy price disadvantage, this key problem identified by Mario Draghi. This will be the main topic this morning.
Migration was mentioned here yesterday and today, which is also one of the important topics of the summits, and you also put the problem in simple terms. You said that one of the keys to this issue is judicial activism. In principle, however, the courts can take decisions on the basis of existing legislation.
Yes… Sorry…
What is the problem here really? The courts or the law?
It would be fine if it were as you say it is, but it looks different once you enter the international arena. So that we’re not always talking about Hungary, although obviously that’s the most important thing for us, let’s look at Italy. The Italian government has passed excellent laws, so there’s nothing wrong with the legislation. They’ve passed laws that help to curb migration. They’re not as good as the Hungarian laws, of course, because our Italian friends aren’t as brave as we are, but they’ve taken important steps. They’re good laws. What did the Italian court do after these laws were challenged there? The Italian court sent them to Brussels. There is such a possibility. Hungarian judges are doing the same. They’re saying that it’s not clear that a law created by the national government isn’t in conflict with European law, and it won’t decide on it there in Italy until it’s been decided on in Brussels. They send it to Brussels. Now in Brussels, well, there’s a kind of federalist judicial culture that thinks in terms of a United States of Europe; and you could have known in advance that they’d say that of course this legislation is contrary to the European Union’s existing rules on migration, and that they’d send the judgment back. The Italian judge says, “But I can’t go against the decisions of the Brussels court, or the Luxembourg court, the decisions of the European Union court”; and they’ve already struck down the excellent legislation that the Italian government passed. They’re doing the same to us, but we’re rebelling. The Italians don’t yet know what to do, because they’re just learning this lesson now. We’ve rebelled against it. So if it were just at national level – courts, legislation, lawmaking – it would be a simple matter to sort it out: pass good laws, and the courts have to enforce the law in their rulings. That would be simple, but Brussels comes in and that’s where the trouble comes from. Judicial activism is in Brussels, that’s the centre of it, that’s where the head of the snake is, so that’s where we need to make a change. And if we can’t make a change, then the others won’t be able to make a difference in the fight against migration. We’re successful because we’ve taken action. So we’re the rebels. And the elites there in Brussels are trying to push us down. That’s why they’re punishing us, that’s why they want to make us pay. That’s why they want to change our rules, that’s why they look for Hungarian politicians – and they always find them – who want to play the Brussels tune, in order to help them into government and change the Hungarian rules to suit Brussels. This is what we’re living through. This is the battle we’re fighting. But I can report that so far we’re winning.
Migration and the economic issues just mentioned form the basis of the new national consultation recently launched by the Government. You’ve said that the aim of this is to strengthen the Hungarian position and increase its room for manoeuvre. But why should Brussels take the results of the consultation into account, when here, on the issue of migration, we’ve been talking about the fact that the opinions and decisions of governments elected by the people are being swept aside?
How it works isn’t that the opinions of the Hungarian people will be taken into account in Brussels, but that the opinions of the Hungarian government will be taken into account. The question is how strong the Hungarian government is. The Government’s position will be as strong as the Hungarian government itself is. And the strength of the Government depends on how much the people support it, how many of them they back it. If there are few of them, as in Germany, then it will be a flop. That’s what they see now. But if many are behind you, you stand your ground and you take on conflicts, and you fight and you battle. I’m able to rebel in Brussels and I’m still alive not because I’m good at it – let’s put that too one side. It’s because behind me – behind us, behind the Hungarian government – there’s a large majority of people, a sensible majority, who don’t want migration, who want a family-friendly government, who want peace, who want normal energy prices, who want a thirteenth month’s pension. Brussels keeps trying to make us scrap the measures that help families the most. They want to abolish taxes, or taxes on large European or international, multinational companies. They want the Hungarian people to pay for this. So there’s a battle in progress. People have their own lives, they probably don’t deal with these issues every day, but it’s good to know that this is an ongoing battle; because in Brussels today there are policies that, if they were directly applied in Hungary, would be bad for every family. And to be able to protect ourselves and our families, we need them to stand up and sometimes make it clear that they’re with the Government. This is how they strengthen us, so that we don’t end up like Germany, where all of a sudden, after the US elections, within 24 hours, bang! The Government’s fallen apart as a result of the failures that have happened up to now. Well, you can’t fight in Brussels if the ground’s shaking under your feet. You need stable positions. This is what the people can give us, and this is why this consultation is important. And I’d like to ask the listeners to read it, fill it in, send it back, and give us the strength to fight this battle.
I’ve been asking Prime Minister Viktor Orbán questions about the summits in Budapest, Donald Trump’s victory, and the state of the Hungarian economy.
