In his speech, delivered on the first day of the autumn session, the Prime Minister highlighted that during the autumn, Hungary would have to repeat several more times at foreign affairs meetings that Hungary had not authorised anyone to wage a war on its behalf.
Hungary is a member of the European Union, is not at war with anyone, and so neither can the European Union be, he stressed.
He added that pro-war countries might well regard themselves as countries at war, but they were not allowed to use the EU for war purposes as long as there was a single country that was opposed to this, and Hungary was, Mr Orbán stated.
In his assessment of the situation, the Prime Minister pointed out that it was not a new phenomenon that wars, the pressure of migration and a new economic and technological revolution posed challenges to the European Union, while neither was it anything new that international politics and the force field of power were undergoing changes. A bloody war has been waged in the territory of our eastern neighbour for three and a half years, the Middle East can be likened most to a gunpowder barrel, and we are compelled to acquaint ourselves with ever further crisis hotspots, he added.
At the same time, in the Prime Minister’s view, it is a new phenomenon that the United States is fulfilling its election promises one by one, and has started a thorough reform in the world order of trade which had previously been believed to be unshakeable. It is a further new phenomenon that the countries of the Far East – China and the countries of the so-called Global South – “have taken up the gauntlet,” and are showing strength and a degree of organisation which had been unprecedented for decades before, while India has tightened its cooperation with the China-Russia axis even further. This will also have an impact on Hungarian foreign trade and Hungarian foreign policy, Mr Orbán said, summing up his projection for the future.
In continuation, he said, it is also a new phenomenon that the European Union “is underperforming, even below our expectations which were modest to begin with,” and has completely knocked itself out of the small elite club of global powers.
He spoke about the speech of the President of the European Commission delivered on 10 September and stressed that according to Ursula von der Leyen, there was a need for military administration. By contrast, Hungary urges a competitiveness turnaround. According to the President of the Commission, financing Ukraine is the number one priority, and they also insist that Ukraine’s accession process must be accelerated.
He recalled that Hungary had lived in the shadow of the war in Ukraine for three and a half years, bearing all its consequences, and had been saying ever since the start of the war that there was no military solution, only diplomatic. Reminding his audience of the US-Russia talks in the summer, the Prime Minister proposed that there should also be European-Russian talks.
He warned that if Ukraine joined the European Union, it would bankrupt both Hungary and Europe, and therefore “we have no reason to support this.”
Mr Orbán said Ukraine’s accession would destroy the Hungarian economy, would rearrange the very foundations of European agriculture, while Hungary would become a net contributor in contrast to its present status.
He added that the more than 2 million votes of the vote on Ukraine’s membership clearly designated Hungary’s position on this matter. However, we must prepare for the eventuality that Brussels, a number of EU Member States and several European parties, including Hungarian ones, will want to change Hungary’s position and “will want to break the Hungarians’ resistance.”
The Prime Minister indicated that in the summer the government had also been compelled to address the issue of Hungary’s energy security because the Druzhba oil pipeline had been targeted by multiple Ukrainian attacks. He observed that the Ukrainians would do well to appreciate the fact that Hungary was Ukraine’s number one electricity supplier.
Mr Orbán highlighted that Russian gas and Russian oil were essential for maintaining the reduction of household energy bills. Thanks to the Hungarian government’s decisions, also in 2025, they are able to offer Hungarian families the European Union’s lowest electricity and gas prices; without the reduction of household energy bills, every family would be compelled to pay hundreds of thousands of forints more for energy, he pointed out.
The Prime Minister recalled that in the summer, they had failed to have the migration pact revoked in Brussels. We looked for partners, but we are still not numerous enough for this. Therefore, the European Commission wants to continue to force the migration pact on Hungary, he stated.
We can see what migration has led to in the West: public security in a number of big cities is in ruins, migrant gangs keep the people in terror, crime rates have skyrocketed, while there are frequent bombing incidents. By contrast, Hungary is an island of peace and security, he stressed, highlighting that here, the number of illegal migrants is zero, while crime associated with persons of migrant background is an unknown phenomenon in Hungary.
Mr Orbán said the migration pact is supported by both the left-wing opposition parties in Parliament and the Tisza Party. However, the government of Hungary opposes it, refuses to accept it and will not implement it.
He recalled that Brussels had imposed financial sanctions on Hungary for not allowing migrants in.
The Tisza Party and DK [Democratic Coalition] announced that they would meet Brussels’ demands. According to the government, this would be a suicidal policy: migrants must not be allowed in, on the issue of migration there is no room for experiments because on this issue one simply cannot make a mistake, he stated.
“I’m saying it openly: I can’t see any possible compromise between the opposition and the government on this issue. As long as there is a national, rather than a Brussels, government in Hungary, the southern border fente will stand, there will be no migration pact, there will be no migrant ghettoes, and there will be no migrant crime either,” Mr Orbán laid down.
In his address in Parliament, the Prime Minister described Brussels’ economic policy as low-quality, slow and hesitant, one that is incapable of action, and took the view that it was a grave question of the coming months whether the EU would be able to change this state of affairs. He recalled that, the four years of the accession talks included, he had taken part in the formulation of Europe’s economic policy for twenty years. He has seen both success and failure, and has witnessed the downward curve of the quality of governance, “leading from Barroso to von der Leyen.”
He took the view that the EU’s present structure was not capable of making the economies of the Member States successful. According to the Prime Minister, the question is how the EU could be transformed and how its economy could be put back on a course of growth; due to its responsibility for the Hungarian people, the EU cannot avoid sincerely facing up to the facts.
Mr Orbán said he does not see the capacity for renewal that the EU would require, but can see the decisions in the making, the plans for further centralisation, the stubborn, prestige-based defending of all the failed policies and that the United States and Asia are fast overtaking us. He added: in his view, Hungary has the capacity, strength and knowledge to grow faster and for the speed of its growth to follow that of the United States and Asia, rather than that of the EU.
Unless the EU performs an urgent and major turnaround, this story will end soon, the Prime Minister stated. Mr Orbán observed: many believe that the EU may collapse or fall apart all of a sudden, envisaging some dramatic swift script. According to the Prime Minister, however, the nature of things in the EU is not like this, it can be likened more to a disgraceful slow death. The EU is more likely to slowly disintegrate and fall apart.
People in the territories of the Roman Empire, too, believed for a long time that it still existed when, in actual fact, it had long since been gone, he said. The Prime Minister indicated that “this fate awaits us, too.” Decisions are made at some Brussels headquarters, and they are not implemented by the Member States. The headquarters are less and less able to enforce their will because they themselves have no faith in their own success.
“They’re like a dysfunctional GPS, they keep replanning, but never reach their destination,” he said.
Migration, green transition, climate policy, sanctions – many efforts, but so little to show for it, Mr Orbán said.
The Prime Minister recalled that last year in Budapest, when Hungary held the rotating EU presidency, the Member States adopted a competitiveness pact with an urgent timetable. Perhaps a third of this has been implemented in Brussels, “and even that with less than satisfactory results,” he pointed out.
Meanwhile, the Americans are rearranging their economy at full speed, while “the Chinese in their fast train are overtaking us as we potter along in a horse-drawn carriage,” the Prime Minister stated.
He recalled that last week former President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi had delivered a committed European federalist speech about what the EU had implemented from the report he had tabled a year previously.
Citing this, Mr Orbán said the foundations of Europe’s growth have weakened further, its fiscal space is scarce, EU public debt is set to rise by 10 percentage points in the next decade, reaching 93 per cent of GDP. Additionally, the growth model is fading, our vulnerabilities are mounting, and there is no clear path to finance the investments we need.
Inaction threatens not only our competitiveness, but our sovereignty itself, the Prime Minister stressed, indicating that the situation calls for a different path, a new speed, a new scale and a new level of intensity.
The Prime Minister also mentioned that last year on the front of artificial intelligence the United States created 40 base models, China 15, while the EU just 3. In the automotive industry employing some 13 million people, European innovation has fallen behind, European models are expensive, while the supply chain is fragmented.
He said Mario Draghi proposes that we must move beyond broad strategies and backloaded timelines. We need concrete dates and deliverables—and to be held accountable for them. According to Mr Orbán, however, knowing European leaders, this will not happen.
He suggested that Hungary should not wait for a Brussels economic policy with a doubtful direction, of doubtful quality and offering a doubtful timeline. In the past few months, the government has decided not to wait any further, and to launch an economic policy following its own national path.
From 1 July, they launched Europe’s biggest tax reduction programme, and they made the child and infant care benefits tax-free. In the case of the infant care benefit, on average, this is an extra HUF 78,000 for families, while in the case of the child care benefit, this results in an extra income of HUF 43,000 a month. Also from 1 July, they raised the family tax benefit by 50 per cent, while from 1 January 2026, they will increase it by another 50 per cent, he stated.
A family with two children will have an extra HUF 40,000 a month, while a family with three children will be able to take home an extra HUF 100,000 a month. They will not wait for Brussels any further: from 1 October, mothers with three children, while in a gradually introduced regime, from 1 January 2026, mothers with two children will be granted lifelong personal income tax exemption, with some one million mothers involved in total.
With the increased family tax benefits and the personal income tax exemption of mothers with two and three children, in 2026, a family with two children could save an extra HUF 1.7 million a year in taxes, while a family with three children as much as HUF 2.4 million a year. These measures combined will leave an extra HUF 4,000 billion with families in the next four years, he said, adding that this is what the government describes as a pro-family tax revolution – which they pledged to accomplish and have delivered upon.
The Prime Minister also spoke about the fact that from 1 September, they launched the most impressive housing programme since the fall of communism, the fixed three per cent housing loan. The Home Start Programme is meaningful help for everyone who does not own a housing property, Mr Orbán pointed out.
The Prime Minister described the programme as a programme for broadening the Hungarian middle classes. He pointed out that the fixed 3 per cent loan facility could open up the opportunity for tens of thousands of young people to become property owners, rather than tenants. It allows them to acquire property and thereby strengthens civic Hungary.
There is enormous interest in the facility, in just three weeks, more than ten thousand credit applications have been submitted throughout the country. According to their calculations, in addition to the usual number of new homes, in response to the programme, another fifty thousand new homes could be built within five years. This will give the Hungarian economy a significant boost, will favour the construction industry and will also strengthen the Hungarian countryside, he stated in summary.
He highlighted that the government had decided in the summer to extend the reduction of profit margins until 30 November and had accepted the voluntary price control measures of banks, insurers and telecommunications companies. The measures seeking to reduce prices reduced inflation by some 1.6 per cent in August, Mr Orbán announced.
He also spoke about the fact that the government is providing food vouchers to the value of HUF 30,000 for 2.4 million pensioners, and that the interest cap is being extended by another six months. While banks contested the government’s decision before the Constitutional Court, the government is ready to take this conflict on, he stated. The interest cap affects some 286,000 credit contracts to the value of HUF 1,200 billion in total, he pointed out.
He added that due to higher than expected inflation, pensioners were entitled to a pension supplement, amounting on average to an extra HUF 51,155 this year.
Mr Orbán described the EU-United States of America tariff agreement as unfavourable. In his view, it does not serve the European people’s interests, and also has consequences for the Hungarian economy which must be compensated for. Therefore, he said in continuation, the Ministry for the National Economy has formulated an industry and job protection action plan. This features fixed-interest loans for small and medium-sized businesses, and the government is also planning to reduce the contributions payable by employers.
He indicated that they would continue the worker loan programme. Up to mid-September, around 30,000 young people took out workers loans to the value of HUF 112 billion in total.
The Prime Minister said the connection of universities with actors of the economy is a success story, highlighting that 12 Hungarian higher education institutions of the world’s 30,000 universities are in the top 5 per cent. He drew attention to the fact that they had also launched the Demján Sándor Programme serving to reinforce small and medium-sized enterprises, as part of which the total grants disbursed reached HUF 100 million in September.
In summary, the Prime Minister said this is our itinerary for the national economy which “Brussels doesn’t like.”
He stressed: the European Commission told Hungary to introduce progressive taxation, to reduce tax benefits, to eliminate the reduction of household energy bills, and to do away with the interest cap and the profit margin reduction. Therefore, the government will start a national consultation on taxation. It is necessary to conduct a social debate about taxation and the flat-rate personal income tax due to the dispute with the European Commission, he pointed out, indicating that the posting of the consultation questionnaires will start at the beginning of October. He encouraged everyone to state their opinion, to complete and to send back the questionnaires.
Mr Orbán also spoke about the fact that at the beginning of the year, the government had launched a manhunt against drug dealers. Since then, more than one tonne of drugs has been removed from the black market, 6,581 criminal procedures have been instituted, while the authorities have seized assets related to drug trafficking worth more than HUF 900 million. He thanked the police for their hard work and said they do not want to and will not live together with drugs and organised crime in the future either, in Hungary, there is zero tolerance regarding drugs.
He said the government majority adopted Europe’s most stringent anti-drug legislation, but there is one more criminal case and regulatory element that has yet to be legislated upon. Therefore, he asked Parliament to adopt these legal acts before the end of the autumn session in the interest of Hungarian children.
At the end of his speech, Mr Orbán also mentioned the issue of verbal and online aggression.
He said “we got to the point” where there are opposition politicians who carry guns when attending political rallies. “We mustn’t lose common sense, we don’t live in the jungle like savages. I asked Members of Parliament to exercise moderation, a civic attitude, calm and composure,” the Prime Minister said, asking Members of Parliament to support the government’s work.
At the beginning of his speech, the Prime Minister congratulated Hungarian astronaut Tibor Kapu, the dozens of experts and government officials not known to members of the public who made his space travel possible, and Ministerial Commissioner Orsolya Ferencz who, in his words, has earned the title ‘space commissioner.’
