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Gábor Gönczi: Welcome, Prime Minister. We’re meeting in Albania, in Tirana, during one of the breaks at the European Political Community summit.
Good day to you.
Although we’re here at this very important meeting, let’s rewind the clock a little, because up until last night we were under the illusion that the world might be waking up to a ceasefire or a rapprochement leading towards peace. Already around yesterday afternoon we could see that wasn’t the case. How disappointed were you? How much was it expected that this could be the outcome?
In this war it’s hard to surprise me with any more twists and turns. Last July, when Hungary took over the Presidency of the European Union, I travelled to Kiev/Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing, and Mar-a-Lago – to see President Trump when he was still in opposition. I don’t think there’s much I can be told that’s new to me. At the time I suggested to President Zelenskyy that we should work together to create a ceasefire as a first step towards a peace agreement, but President Zelenskyy told me flatly that it wasn’t a good idea, that he didn’t want a ceasefire, that peace wasn’t an option, that time was on his side and that he would win. I said, “Mr. President, time is not on your side, it’s on your opponent’s side. There will be big trouble, a very big defeat, a very big defeat, a huge loss, and in the end you’ll be left alone. Let’s call a ceasefire and make peace now.” His reply was, “No, time is on the Ukrainians’ side, and we will win.” Then I was in Moscow and there I saw that there was very little will to compromise. Hungary has worked hard for a ceasefire and for peace, because, if you look back to a year ago, there was no one else to do that job. But then, fortunately, in January the new US president came in, took over the banner, and today he’s holding the flag of peace high. There’s one thing we have to do: support the US president. I’m convinced that there will be no peace until there’s a negotiation between the US president and the Russian president, like the one between the US president and the Ukrainian president.
Prime Minister, I have the feeling that you’ve said the same thing countless times to all the leaders of Europe. And in the meetings this morning I’ve seen that you always start with that, and on this they still don’t want to believe you.
Yes, but in politics the most important thing is persistence. If you’re fighting for the right cause, then don’t be afraid to try to assert your convictions and repeat them a hundred times – or a thousand times. Every time we get one step closer to a ceasefire – it’s just that we’re not there yet. I repeat: we need direct US–Russian negotiations – and then, or before that, Russian–European negotiations. Russian–Ukrainian negotiations will never end this war.
Let’s hope that it will happen soon – but for the moment we can only hope. Today’s summit has started, and in the speeches we’ve noticed that it’s mostly about the war, mostly about Ukraine, and less about Europe – which is what we’re most interested in.
I always try to bring the focus of the discussions back to Europe. I can tell you that, because of the war, the Hungarian economy has lost over 20 billion euros in three years. “You’re bigger than us, and I think you’ve lost much more. Why are we doing this? Let’s seek peace, let’s seek a ceasefire, let’s forget about sanctions, let’s return to normal economic cooperation, and we’ll have a lot of economic opportunities.” And today families are suffering and companies are suffering. This year alone, without peace we’ve wasted four months, nearly five months: in five months a loss to the Hungarian economy of billions of euros. Let’s finally focus on our own affairs and give the European economy a boost.
Do they hear this? Is anyone listening? Of course the President of the Commission has again been speaking mostly about Ukraine, and she’s been speaking in favour of Ukraine.
In the company we’re in now, in the European Political Community, the key country is Germany. I met the German chancellor, and this is all that I spoke to him about.
So let’s talk about that one-to-one meeting. You met the German chancellor, and it was obviously a nice, good-humoured, friendly conversation. This is what we’ve seen so far, and then…
Nothing went wrong then…
…and then we left you. What was it about?
The most important thing is German–Hungarian economic cooperation. I made it clear that what we have now is bad for us. So the fact that Germany is the sick man of Europe, and that the German economy isn’t competitive and is performing increasingly badly isn’t just a problem for the Germans – it’s also a problem for us, for Hungarians. Because the two economies are very closely linked. So I said that first of all we wish them every success. Hungary has an interest in the success of the new German government, and in bilateral relations we’ll do everything we can to ensure that not only are we successful, but that they are too. And we’re ready to deepen economic cooperation – which the Chancellor was extremely pleased with, by the way, because German–Hungarian bilateral relations are going very well, economic cooperation is strong, and they want to deepen it.
And Mr. Merz, how much does he agree with Hungary’s position on Ukraine, or how much does he oppose it?
The position on Russia and Ukraine was clarified in a short sentence. We don’t agree.
At the moment that doesn’t sound so good. The other bilateral meeting, or one-to-one meeting, was with Mark Rutte, the Secretary General of NATO. What was in that big conversation?
That was a wide-ranging discussion, but what’s most important for us now is that I told the NATO Secretary General that I find it unacceptable that there’s Hungary, a NATO member country, against whom a non-NATO member state – Ukraine – is conducting a disinformation campaign, organised by its secret services. This is unacceptable! And I said that everything possible must be done to ensure that Ukraine stops doing it. Let’s stop them! It’s unacceptable for a NATO member country to be weakened by a disinformation campaign, and that the intelligence services are involved. I asked the NATO Secretary General to take this into account in future decisions.
Does the Secretary General understand what this is about? Does he understand our situation?
Everyone can see that we are the closest to Ukraine: we’re a neighbouring state. There must be a lot of clever people in Brussels and in The Hague and in Washington, but they’re far away. We’re the closest to what the reality is. Therefore, regardless of Hungary’s size, our word is that of the witness. This is also what gives us weight. We know what’s happening there. What’s more, since we don’t support Ukraine’s membership of the European Union, we’re in a dispute with the Ukrainians, and so we know how the Ukrainians behave in a dispute. No one’s ever seen anything like the situation in which someone wants to join the European Union, with one country – Hungary – being against it, and then Ukraine doesn’t want to convince us, doesn’t want to dispel our problems and our doubts, doesn’t want to offer us solutions, but wants to discredit us. That’s how to never get into the European Union!
What diplomatic means does NATO have to intervene here, or can it only mediate?
We don’t need NATO’s help, we just need NATO to be aware of what’s happening here, and not to give credence to any kind of campaign to discredit Hungary. The Ukrainians want to say that Hungary is a dangerous country that serves Russia’s interests, whereas we’ve said a thousand times that we’re not interested in Russia’s interests or Ukraine’s interests, because Hungarian foreign policy is guided by a single criterion: the interests of the Hungarians. That is our starting point.
It’s quite amazing, so let’s talk about it. Since February, an incredible chain of events has been taking place here in terms of disinformation and discrediting Hungary, and in terms of Ukrainian influence…
Yes, it was impossible to delay certain legislation any longer, because we can’t allow pro-war propaganda campaigns financed from abroad to run unhindered in Hungary. So we’ve been forced to state the simple truth that anyone who’s involved in politics in Hungary cannot accept money from abroad. We’ve submitted the relevant legislation to Parliament. We’re not now fighting the same battles as before, such as migration and gender, in which foreign-funded organisations also emerged. Those weren’t insignificant issues either, but we were able to deal with them. But this is about war. So today pro-war propaganda is being conducted in Hungary with foreign money. This cannot be allowed!
Moreover, it seems that they’ve found an ally inside Hungary.
We all know Hungarian history, we all know that in Hungary political actors have always been divided into two groups: there have been the national forces who served their homeland; and then there have always been those who were in the pay of foreign powers. It’s no different now. It looks a little better than earlier, now that they’re not financed from Hitler’s Germany or the communist Soviet Union, but from Brussels and with Soros money. But this doesn’t change the essence. They’re not friends of Hungary, but right now are friends of the Ukrainians; and they’re accepting money from Brussels and the Soros Empire in an attempt to gain political power in Hungary. This isn’t something new, but now the stakes are undoubtedly higher, because the Ukrainian issue is, after all, linked to war and peace. Ukraine’s membership of the European Union, which we’re opposed to, is extremely dangerous. Because if we admit the Ukrainians, we’ll also be admitting war into the EU. So here there’s no room for error; peace and war are the most important issues in people’s lives, and in this we cannot tolerate foreign intervention.
What weight should we give to, or how dangerous should we consider, the fact that there’s now clear evidence that the Tisza Party and Ukraine have formed the kind of alliance that…
Well, Hungary is a strong country. It’s a well-constructed country, a well-constructed state, with strong abilities to defend its sovereignty, and strong self-defence capabilities. We have the institutions that are known in other countries in Europe, that are known there; so we know how to prevent interference from a foreign state, and we know how to detect cooperation between a foreign state and political or public actors in Hungary. We know how to document it, we know how to drive it back, and we know how to protect a country against such a conspiracy, such a foreign intention to exert influence. These state bodies are working, they’re operational, I’m at my post, I’m directing their work, and Hungary can defend itself.
The Government attaches great importance to the Voks2025 opinion poll, and this is where I think the threads join up. There’s a European way of thinking, according to which Ukraine should be admitted in a fast-track procedure. But at the same time in Hungary there’s a thread that’s working in line with this mainstream and rather against Hungary.
Everything we’re talking about points in the same direction. So the actions of the Ukrainian secret service, the collusion of the Hungarian opposition with the Ukrainians and Brussels, the money coming from Brussels and Soros, the accelerated admission of Ukraine to the European Union, all these things point in one direction: they want to transform the European Union and they want to admit Ukraine at any cost. And that would have tragic consequences for the Hungarian economy. So far we’ve received no answers, no guarantees, nothing from Brussels or elsewhere as to how the Hungarian economy will survive this. Millions of Ukrainian migrants will arrive here. So if there’s no border between the two countries, jobs and everything else will be at risk. The activities of the Ukrainian mafia are well known in Hungary. It won’t be possible to guarantee public safety. European Union money will no longer be going to Central Europe, but to Ukraine. In Brussels, too, they’re starting to see that this will cause economic problems, because farmers are planning a big demonstration in Brussels early next week to show their opposition to Ukraine’s membership of the EU, as it would spell ruin for European agriculture. And there are a lot of issues – from health to pensions – that are problems in addition to the war and the issues being listed here. So there are dozens of problems that would be caused to Hungary by Ukrainian membership, and for which at the moment we don’t have any preventative means. This is why we must not admit that Ukrainians to the European Union – quickly, slowly, or in any way. These issues have yet to be satisfactorily resolved.
And after this meeting are you calmer than you were yesterday, or do you think exactly the same as you did yesterday or the day before?
In my profession, the fundamental rule is that you must sleep with one eye open.
Yes. Listening to the speeches here, it’s really as if the message is falling on deaf ears.
No, no, I’d be more cautious than that, because politics is a profession in which the results come from people’s interactions. So it may well be that we haven’t made any progress in a plenary session here, but I’ve also spoken to a number of people, others have also spoken to each other, there have been bilateral meetings, some misunderstandings have been clarified, and on other issues agreements have been reached. We’ve made progress today, and Hungary’s position today is better than it was yesterday. So let’s not end today by saying that we’ve worked in vain, but rather that we’ve done our job today, and it shows
President Zelenskyy is also present. Have you met him?
We said hello to each other.
So much for the meeting, Prime Minister. I have a few other questions. Prime Minister, you’ve put an “H” on your Facebook page. Everyone is asking me what the letter H means, and I’ve not been able to give an answer to anyone. What can one say about it?
One doesn’t need to. Check out our event on Sunday, which we’re holding in the afternoon. That’s where people who feel that the letter “H” addresses them will get together.
Okay, so on Sunday the big secret will be revealed.
It’s not such a big secret, but it’s worth noting that for the last few months we haven’t slept either. We knew that Hungary was under attack, and we also knew that it would be difficult to fend it off without the Government’s efforts. We need people who love their country, who are willing to stand up for it, who are willing to fight for Hungary, and we need to organise them into a political community so that we can defend Hungary. There will be a meeting about this, and it will be visible to everyone who’s interested.
And in the last few days there’s been an important event: BYD is bringing its development centre to Hungary. This is of huge importance. Why?
There are two big issues here. The first is that Hungary needs to be involved in the world’s cutting-edge industrial developments. If we don’t participate, we’ll be left out. If we want to be there in the future, and if we want to be strong in the future, we must not be left behind in technological terms. So we need investments that bring new technologies. First there are always factories – that’s how it started with Audi. Then there are development engineers, then there are research engineers, and then there are relocations to European centres. With BYD, we’re at the point where we have an agreement with the big Chinese car factory in Szeged. Now we’ve discussed research and development, and they’re moving their European development centre to Hungary. Here they’ll be employing about two thousand people, mostly well-trained development engineers. And then we’ll be doing research together in this new technology called electromobility. So we haven’t given up on our idea, our realisation – which isn’t our own, but that of other clever people around the world – that the future of motor vehicle production lies in electromobility, and that the era of electric vehicle production will replace conventional vehicle production. Hungary wants to be at the forefront of this, just as we were at the forefront of the production and development of conventional vehicles in Hungary in the early 1990s. So we have a grand strategy, we have an industrial strategy, and automotive manufacturing occupies an important place in it. And in the future, in the next two decades, electromobility will be the key to it. In this context, it’s of great significance that, after production, the Chinese have also brought a development centre to Hungary.
In closing, Prime Minister, you always radiate energy and you always have an optimistic outlook on how the world works and what kind of tomorrow we’ll wake up to. What would be a good scenario for an end to the war, and for the future of Ukraine?
I think that a meeting between President Trump and President Putin should take place as soon as possible. This should preferably go beyond the war in Ukraine, and onto the issue of sanctions and economic cooperation. The Europeans should understand that there’s no point in going our separate ways: let’s close ranks with the Americans, and let’s also conclude an agreement between the Ukrainians and the Russians. Let there be economic content to this, and let’s integrate both Ukrainian and Russian energy and economic potential into the European economic bloodstream. Then we’ll gain momentum and the European economy will be great and successful again. This can happen in a few months.
Thank you very much, Prime Minister.
