He stressed that everyone, not only Hungarians, but people elsewhere in Europe, too, must raise their voice because otherwise “European leaders will teeter, stumble into a war.”
Drawing a parallel, he said he is observing eerily the same signs that emerged before World War I.
Mr Orbán stressed that the Hungarian government’s position was not a position “apportioned to someone else’s,” but a Hungarian self-interest. “I’m only prepared to stand for that,” he laid down.
He added that as far as he was concerned, it was irrelevant whether it coincided with the interests of others.
Mr Orbán stressed that we needed serious and sincere discussions, adding that “any media outlet, any journalist who is paid from abroad is not a sovereign person, and there is no point in talking to them.”
“There is no compromise on the issue of national sovereignty,” the Prime Minister stated, expressing his conviction that there are evidently many also on the Left with whom they have no dispute regarding the issue of the importance of peace. It would be best if they joined us, too; not Fidesz, but the Hungarians or peace-loving Hungarians, Mr Orbán stated.
He said it is a consequence of the unwholesome development of Hungarian society that the thought may arise that the government side wants to monopolise the cause of peace. He mentioned as an example that in the United States one of the main parties is called ‘Democratic,’ yet, its rival would never dream of saying that “we are excluded from democracy,” the same as that despite the name ‘Republican Party’ “it never crosses a Democrat’s mind that he or she is not pro-republic.” “This is bad, I think it’s stigmatisation, exclusion, a bad game left behind from the communist times,” he stated, adding that “you can’t build national unity like this.”
Mr Orbán said the work completed by the government since 2010 gives the Hungarians a chance to stay out of the war. “We are capable of great things if we believe in this, if we don’t become absorbed in our own successes and always remember where exactly we come from and what our limitations are. Moderation and fairness are the two virtues that I think Hungarian politics should be based on,” the Prime Minister pointed out.
According to Mr Orbán, Hungary can contribute to restoring peace, can serve as a good means in the policy of pro-peace countries bigger than ourselves, but it is not realistic to believe that we alone are able to restore peace.
The Prime Minister recalled that the Hungarians had wanted to stay out of the great European wars twice – World War I during the premiership of István Tisza and World War II during the regency of Miklós Horthy – but had failed.
“The question is whether – if things take such a turn and Europe goes to war – we’ll be able to stay out. Are we strong enough for this, are we smart enough, do we have good enough leaders for this who grasp the bigger picture in good time and want to stay out? Are we independent enough of Brussels which wants to push us into the war? Do we have enough presence of mind against the Germans – if God forbid, they want to go to war again – to prevent us from going with them?” he listed. “I can gather together all the events and all our decisions since 2010 that reveal that they also served the purpose that should such a crisis situation emerge, we should be able to stay out of the war,” Mr Orbán stated.
“I can say with certainty that for various reasons at this point in time the warring parties to the Russo-Ukrainian war don’t want to conclude peace. Therefore, we must try to mobilise the great powers of the world with a vested interest in peace to induce them to conclude a peace deal with external influence,” the Prime Minister said. He highlighted: last year, he tried to convince President Zelenskyy that time was working against them, time was not on their side, and the longer the war lasted, the more they would lose, but Zelenskyy did not heed his words.
He added that Ukraine had ceased to be a sovereign country, it was unable to sustain itself. “It exists because the West wants it to exist,” they provide the necessary money and weapons. “Therefore, the West has means at its disposal to motivate the Ukrainians towards peace.”
He added that time was on the Russians’ side. It would be good to conclude a peace deal before they occupy the territories they want at the expense of a terrible loss of blood. Hungary is doing everything it can to restore peace, “we’re working to avert the most terrible disaster,” “we can spare the lives of many tens or even hundreds of thousands of people on the eastern front,” he added.
It is for a reason, he observed, that peace is the only secular, political issue on which the Vatican expresses a firm and clear position.
He also spoke about the fact that the European leaders supporting the war should listen to “the Almighty’s warning that they stand for something evil.” Even in the hearts of pro-war politicians, there is – at the level of doubt – the question of conscience ‘Oh God, what are we doing?’ This should be somehow turned into politics, he underlined.
Regarding the Czech Republic, he said it is a Slavic community representing a high cultural quality, and they know that what they now have is surely bad for them financially. Earlier, Prime Minister Andrej Babis was finance minister, and so he rules out the possibility that the Czechs should support a policy that costs them even a penny. “They will be on the side of peace, there, you must pay the price for every drop based on the experiences of the dispensation of Czech beer,” he said.
Regarding the agreement concluded with the United States, Mr Orbán said there is a need for a protective financial shield because in Trianon an unviable Hungary was created
With the Trianon peace treaty “they took away from us everything that is necessary for the existence of a nation. They took our oilfields, our mines, our forests away,” he pointed out.
He added that as a result, since World War I, Hungary has existed in a system of attributes, has been compelled to survive, to stay alive and if possible to grow in an environment where the fundamental conditions of life providing a degree of security are missing. It always needed a special system of financial connections because when they attack your currency, you must protect it, and for that you need financial instruments. “If you have no realia – and you don’t because it was taken away – you only have a national bank account, and at that moment you find yourselves financially vulnerable. Therefore, Hungary always needed, needs and will continue to need a protective financial shield,” he argued.
We need the protective financial shield we received from America not now; we may need it in the future, the Prime Minister said, adding that he has already built other smaller protective shields for Hungary as well. The American protective shield is the biggest, but we also have smaller protective shields, he observed. He also said a protective shield is something “we may need,” meaning not now because for the time being, “we’re fine.” A protective shield is a tool you pick up and “pull it in front of you.”
There are 4 or 5 financial instruments known in the international world of finance which can be used at times like this, he said. He mentioned currency swap as an example, the essence of which is that “if you need hard currency and there is no one to buy your forints,” then someone agrees to buy forints from you, while the flexible credit line is another facility “which is open” and the country draws on it when it needs to. At this time, the protective shield “doesn’t cost Hungary anything,” when we do need it, depending on the instrument we choose, it will have a price, but that will emerge then, the Prime Minister laid down.
Regarding the exemption from the energy sanctions, Mr Orbán repeated that the US system was a presidential system, the exemption granted was valid for as long as it had been granted by the US president; the agreement is “without a temporal limit.” The exemption “will remain in effect as long as Donald Trump is the President of the United States of America, has good relations with Hungary and honours the agreement concluded. As long as that is the case, it will remain in effect, whatever anyone writes, “believe me, he’s that kind of man, it will be the way he says it will be,” he said.
In answer to a question relating to the migration pact and the penalty imposed on Hungary, he said he thought until recently that migration was the biggest existential threat to Hungary. Now, we also have the war, meaning that today, there are two things happening in Europe that are threatening Hungary’s very existence.
We must stay out of the war and we must protect ourselves against migration. You cannot stay out of it because it is here at the border, meaning that a fence must be built and we must protect ourselves, he pointed out.
He also said being Hungarian is a fantastic thing, and additionally the Hungarian is a people of tribal origin which sees itself in the universe as a process, of which we are a part. We see our grandfathers and our grandchildren.
He said “for me everything that threatens to destroy this, to erode this, to eliminate this, to put an end to the Hungarian quality of life as it is is my enemy. And everything that strengthens this is our friend. Migration changes us, we won’t be Hungarians anymore or what we will turn into may well be called Hungarian, but it won’t be that.” He also said that he does not see a single country in Europe which has become happier as a result of having let migrants in.
He indicated that we are unable to come to an agreement with the European Union on the issue of migration. Today, Brussels believes that migration is good and that the strong attachment of European nations to national identity, especially that of the Hungarians, is bad. In their view, it would help European cooperation if “those pesky Hungarians” and a few others “finally abandoned their stubborn, obstinate, rigid patriotic feelings and learnt how to live together with other kinds of peoples.” They believe that diversity is a value, he said, stressing that in his view, homogeneity, too, is a value, that “my neighbour is like me.” Why should we give that up? he asked.
He also said we feel safe and at home, we feel at home in our country if we know those who are our neighbours. We must not give this up, there is enormous strength in this, he pointed out. You cannot come to an agreement on this because either you let them in or you do not, he laid down. He also said Hungarians have different views on migration, and he is “the man for those” who believe that “we will never let them in, only over our dead bodies or not even like that.”
The Prime Minister said it is a very difficult task to address young people who share views that are different from those of his party, pointing out that they are in a different code system, culture and mentality, and they see a lot of beauty in the world that is different from what we have here. At the same time, young people are our children, he added, observing that we must first clarify our own responsibility, whether we were good parents, whether we prepared them for life, whether we told the next generation that what they thought could lead to trouble.
The Prime Minister said he is convinced that if they speak to young people, “most of them will come to the same conclusion as we have.”
Regarding the Hungarian football team’s upcoming World Cup qualifying match on Sunday, Mr Orbán said “this will not be a sports event, but a test of character; you have to be a man, it will be revealed now what kind of men we are.”
Answering questions put to him on social media, the Prime Minister said ordinary people can do most for peace if they realise one of its pre-conditions, peace within first of all, and not seeing enemies in one’s fellow human beings. “Once you’ve created peace within yourself, you have taken a very big step towards peace,” Mr Orbán said, stressing that people with inner peace tend not to wage wars or avoid such conflicts as long as possible.
The Prime Minister encouraged everyone to play a role of some kind in public life, stressing that nothing compares with the feeling that “you could do something good almost every day.”
In answer to another question, he said in order to understand how the war can be concluded, it helps much to consider why it broke out in the first place.
Mr Orbán said while opinions on this question diverge, in his opinion, the war broke out because Moscow saw a threat in the process that started in 1990, that “western powers were moving ever closer to Russia,” including through the enlargement of NATO. When Ukraine’s accession was placed on the agenda, they decided to prevent this at any cost.
This does not exonerate the Russians from the fact that they achieved this by destroying an inordinate number of human lives, in defiance of international law, with a military invasion, but this is the root cause, he pointed out.
If we can make the Russians an offer about how to build a European security architecture in a way which provides security for us and also for them, then we will be able to come to an agreement with them on the conclusion of the war in Ukraine, he said. Naturally, this requires strength because the Russians are a military people, and they come to an agreement with those that they see strength in. Meaning that it is important for us to be strong; not in order to wage a war, but to be able to create a state of balance and to come to an agreement with the Russians. “This is what we must strive for, this is the philosophy I follow,” he stated.
Answering a question relating to the Left, Mr Orbán took the view that the Left in Hungary was void of intellectual content; it is nothing other than a mass of people gathered together for power, and this is pitiable. He stressed that the Right had realised the Left’s programme points which they had once been so proud of.
“One of them was full employment which we realised, while they introduced a Bokros Package. In the field of social support for families, they took money away, while we have reinforced families. The third one is the reduction of poverty for which no other government had done more than we have,” Mr Orbán pointed out.
