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The EU is isolated, but Hungary is not. The EU today is a toothless lion. We have a community of our own, which is Hungary, and the war is costing us dearly. Ukraine is a country that has only ever been able to sustain itself through large international loans. If it joins the EU, we will pay the price: every year Hungarians will pay around half a million forints per family – 500,000 forints per household – for Ukraine’s membership. Inside, where we need to speak frankly and honestly, the argument against Ukraine’s membership of the EU – for the financial, military, security, law and order and other reasons that have been mentioned here – is only being put by Hungary. But there are more of us outside in the corridor.
Máté Gerhardt: And what will this be enough for?
Sooner or later these sounds from the corridor will make their way into the negotiating chamber.
Presidents Trump and Putin are negotiating a ceasefire, they’re negotiating peace; and in these negotiations it really looks as if the European Union isn’t being dealt many cards – and Ukraine perhaps even fewer. What are your expectations? Thinking about the war, how much is the EU’s position changing now?
The Union is floundering: it doesn’t know whether it has a future – and, if so, what it will consist of. The EU – together with the Americans, together with the previous US administration – committed itself to the extreme geopolitical action of us extending the NATO border to Russia’s border, so that Ukraine would become a NATO member; or – if for some reason that wouldn’t be legally possible – even to us actually integrating Ukraine into the Western military system. And they started to do that. In response to this, the Russians invaded; and the Russians have occupied a fifth of Ukraine and pushed Ukraine back. And they’re still saying that on the front line they’re winning, and that they’ll only accept a peace that doesn’t bring NATO and NATO’s military capabilities to their borders – there, to their backyard. The Americans have given up – or rather the Americans have realised that the previous administration dragged the United States into an irresponsible adventure. The new president has said, “Let there be peace, what’s happened has happened, we are where we are; but let’s stop the killing and let’s have a ceasefire and then a lasting peace.” The Europeans haven’t given up on their plan to bring NATO into the Russians’ backyard, and are continuing with the earlier script. This is why today there’s a strategic separation between what the United States stands for and what the Union stands for. The United States has the power, the EU has no power; the Americans have the tools, the EU has no tools. Whatever we want to do, we can only do it by borrowing. And the loans are piling up and up, and the European Union will be buried under them. This must not be done. So this is why the Union today is a toothless lion.
Borrowing money is one thing in itself, but what’s much more interesting – and, let’s say, here we’re thinking mainly of peace and Ukraine – is that integrating it into NATO is one thing; but the question of EU membership is also extremely fraught, from an economic, social and political point of view. What’s at stake for Hungary if Ukraine is indeed admitted to the EU?
The fact that the West continues to push for Ukraine’s membership of the EU – and is pushing ever harder and ever more urgently – is the result of the fact that they still haven’t given up on the idea of integrating Ukraine into the Western world, both militarily and economically. I think we can see that this isn’t going to work militarily – although, incidentally, the Europeans are trying to find the money with which we’d be able to finance the Ukrainian army. And membership is about rapidly getting them into the European economy. Well, sobering up is inevitable. For now the main drinking song is, “Let’s take Ukraine in as quickly as possible”; but later there will be a sobering up. We have our own numbers for Hungary. Sooner or later every country will calculate the economic consequences of all this for itself, and the entire process will die. You just have to fight: it won’t die on its own, so you have to fight, because Brussels will push for Ukraine’s rapid membership of the EU. We have the calculations. First of all, there’s the past. Here we’re not talking about membership: we’re talking about the war. Now they’re coming out, now a fascinating debate is starting in Hungary, I think, about how much the war has cost the Hungarians and how much Ukraine’s membership of the European Union would cost us, directly and indirectly.
Are we talking about the past three years?
Yes. For the past three years we can say that we’ve had three big costs that we’ve had to pay or bear. One is that international gas prices have changed, and we’ve lost a huge amount there. The second is that the market environment has changed, and so we’ve had to pay higher interest rates to get access to credit. So we have an interest-induced loss. And because of the sanctions we’ve lost the Russian export market. If I add all this up, I get the very high amount of over 9 trillion forints; and if I distribute this across families, it’s 2.5 million forints per Hungarian family, let’s say, per household. This is the past: this is what we’ve lost so far. When I talk about peace and fight for peace, then of course – as the leader of a Christian, conservative government – I’m thinking first and foremost of human lives: hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of lives are being lost. But I’m also thinking about the fact that we have our own community, Hungary, and the war is costing us a huge amount. Despite resisting it and not allowing ourselves to be pushed into this war, staying out of it, we have suffered the economic consequences. Over three years we’ve paid 2.5 million forints per family for this war. So peace is also in the direct economic interest of every Hungarian family. This is the past. And then there’s the future. If Ukraine were to become a member of the EU, which I wouldn’t advise and I’d ask Hungarians to work together to prevent this, then we’d need to pay another bill. There are three big items here. The first is that if the Ukrainians came into the EU, then Ukraine would have to be rebuilt with EU money. That would be a huge cost. The second is that we’d have to run the Ukrainian state, because the Ukrainians are unable to run their own state. So the Ukrainians don’t have the capacity to work, to earn money and run their state: the pension system, health care, social care, the justice system – not to mention the army.
They didn’t have it before either. Or was it at a level that meets EU standards?
It wasn’t. Of course they didn’t have that capacity. Three years ago the biggest criticism of Putin was precisely that it was pointless to go to war, because at the time analysts said that Ukraine would soon collapse economically. That was a long time ago, and it’s water under the bridge; but Ukraine is a country that has only ever been able to sustain itself through large international loans. If it joins the EU, we will pay the price. And there’s a third circumstance: the indirect costs. There are agricultural subsidies, which are a huge amount of money within the European Union, and which are vital for our farmers. But suddenly we’d have a rival, or a new applicant, who would want a big slice of the cake. Huge tracts of land and agricultural potential would come into the EU, and they’d apply for subsidies, they’d be entitled to them, and Hungarian farmers would be ruined. Likewise, the Cohesion Fund – which is an important financial fund in the European Union – is used to support the least developed regions of less developed countries. Hungary has four such regions, and all of a sudden all of that money would be transferred to Ukraine. This would mean that for Ukraine’s membership Hungarians would pay around half a million forints per family every year: 500,000 forints per household.
And if this sobering up takes place, yes, if this sobering up takes place, what will the Union’s response be? Will they suddenly back down and say that they didn’t mean it? Or will they tell Ukraine that they can’t implement it?
Well, I don’t like publicly quoting conversations that are off the record. But, hoping you won’t force me to name countries, I can tell you for sure that inside, where we need to speak frankly and honestly, the argument against Ukraine’s membership of the EU – for the financial, military, security, law and order and other reasons that have been mentioned here – is only being put by Hungary. But there are more of us outside in the corridor.
And what will this be enough for?
Sooner or later these sounds from the corridor will make their way into the negotiating chamber.
And once that’s happened, Hungary can gain allies – because we always hear that in this fight Hungary is on its own.
So far, Hungary hasn’t been left on its own – unlike the EU. So if we take a bird’s eye view of the current situation, we see that today the EU is in a trade war with China, in a sanctions war with Russia, and in a political war with the United States – because Trump is hated here so much that it’s hard to describe. By contrast, Hungary has excellent relations – even friendly relations – with the new leadership of the United States. We have fair-minded cooperation with the Russians, and very encouraging and good cooperation with the Chinese. The EU is isolated, but Hungary is not. My job is to prevent Hungary from becoming isolated alongside the EU. This is why we’re pursuing, I’m pursuing, a foreign policy that offers Hungary broad cooperation around the world – unlike the Union, which is increasingly closing itself off. And as far as the situation within the EU is concerned, first of all, here we are, the Central Europeans: cooperation with the Slovaks is good; cooperation with the Czechs is difficult at the moment, but there will soon be a turnaround there; cooperation with the Austrians is good; and we often find common ground with the Croats. So there are shared Central European interests on which we can always reach agreement. There’s another issue, on which we have excellent cooperation with the French: the issue of energy prices – and within that, nuclear cooperation. So Hungary isn’t looking for permanent allies within the EU, but we’re making deals or agreements depending on the issue on the table. At 10 a.m. tomorrow, for example, there will be a meeting of prime ministers who are against migration. The official summit starts at 11, but at 10 there will be a meeting of prime ministers who are against migration; we’ll be there, together with six or seven other countries. So I’m making alliances and seeking cooperation on a case-by-case basis.
What do you expect tomorrow, by the way, when it comes to Ukraine? I’m sure that will generate the most debate. What will be the item – the agenda item or the event – that you expect to generate the most debate?
We had a really fierce debate two weeks ago, when I made it clear that – however much pain it gave me and the others – in the future we wouldn’t be entering any joint position on Ukraine, because we were going in a completely different strategic direction in terms of our thinking and the others’ thinking. We’re openly in favour of the United States’ attempts at building peace. We have a peace strategy. Let’s end the war as quickly as possible, let’s stop dragging out this huge financial loss, let’s get rid of it, let’s support the United States, let them make peace, and let’s enter an era of economic cooperation. The Europeans don’t want that. They say that Ukraine must fight. They have a war strategy, and in the medium term they want to use Ukraine against Russia: to arm it, to keep it armed, to supply it with military equipment, and to keep it afloat financially. This is quite different from the American strategy. So the other day it was clear that there are two strategies on the table: ours and theirs. Ours is the same as the Americans’; so we’re not alone, and it’s not just a question of being 26 to 1, but 26 to 1 and Uncle Sam. So this is why we won’t be able to reach a joint position on Ukraine, or on direct support to Ukraine. There’s no such effort any more, and they’ve resigned themselves to that fact. What they wanted to do is being done by 26 of them, and Hungary doesn’t want to be part of it. Ukraine’s membership of the European Union is a different matter, because on that there cannot be 26 and 1: there has to be unanimity. It’s only possible to admit a new member to the EU if all Member States support it. And we don’t support it. I’ll stop the proposals on this by politely saying that a referendum is taking place in Hungary at the moment, which is about people giving their opinion on Ukraine’s membership of the European Union. They shouldn’t even try to take a position on this here; because until the Hungarian people’s opinion is known, I will stop it. We’ll find out what the Hungarian people think, and in the light of that the Hungarian position will come to Brussels. And then we can continue the debate.
Thank you very much, Prime Minister.
Thank you, too.
