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The Prime Minister said the Brussels bureaucrats want to take the 13th monthly pension away, and economists behind the opposition parties, too, regularly say that it is not right. Before every heating season, new studies and recommendations emerge which must be rejected. We must protect the 13th monthly pension, he stated.
He said they have protected it so far and will continue to do so also in the future due to the welfare of pensioners and faith in the future. In the Prime Minister’s view, the 13th monthly pension is a spiritual, psychological and political issue, and only an economic one less importantly.
If we want to carve a winning nation out of ourselves – and that is what we want to do, in contrast to the cynics – then we must defeat old troubles. One such old trouble that everyone personally remembers and that also materially affected everyone was the taking away of the 13th monthly pension during the Gyurcsány-Bajnai era, he recalled.
Mr Orbán pointed out that the people were not aware what a struggle the payment of the 13th monthly pension was. It is the result of a battle, and it is not only about raising the necessary HUF 500 billion.
He also said wages are increasing more swiftly than pensions, but with the 13th monthly pension they are able to approximate the rate of pension increases to the rate of wage increases.
The Prime Minister said the one-million-forint average monthly salary is well within reach, and we will reach it. He highlighted that it was a factor of Hungarian economic policy that the people who actually operated the economy should believe that “we are in a situation where we can aim for formidable achievements.” If we manage to break through or circumvent the wall of cynicism that is characteristic of a part of the Hungarian public, then the economy will start picking up, he said. In his view, in contrast to the cynics’ opinion, there are major sources of energy and there is a very large amount of money in the Hungarian economy.
The Prime Minister also said the November US presidential elections “play a part” in the improving economic data because Donald Trump’s victory means that the war phase will most certainly end and an era of peace will set in. Economic actors are always cautious in times of war, but “when opportunities open up,” peace sets in, you can do business, you can take risks, doing business is worthwhile, then they start moving.
The American tail-wind was already perceivable last year, but it will “blow in the Hungarian sails of the economy” especially this year, Mr Orbán stated.
The Prime Minister said it is fantastic that 800,000 persons invested their money in government securities. Regarding each person as a family and multiplying this number by four, this means that 3,200,000 persons live in families which have savings in government securities, and this is only a tenth of the total Hungarian financial savings amounting to HUF 90,000 billion. According to the Prime Minister, the data shows that it is not the richest who buy government securities as 50,000 persons have such investments below HUF 1 million, 191,000 persons have government securities holdings between HUF 1 and 5 million, 117,000 persons hold portfolios between HUF 5 and 10 million, while 121,000 persons have government securities investments worth between HUF 10 and 25 million.
He also spoke about the fact that the broadening of the middle classes was the best remedy against poverty. He described the broadening and strengthening of the middle classes as a realistic goal. He indicated that this year the economy will grow at a rate that will be even higher than the last quarter’s “perceivable growth.” If we manage to mobilise the money of private individuals, “we will have a fantastic year,” he stated.
Mr Orbán stressed that they must concern themselves with the middle classes and those below, “this is what is called a truly people’s party policy.” President Trump, too, won with such a policy if someone observed the US elections, he pointed out, highlighting that western politics is becoming ever more clearly reduced to the issues of life and chances.
He highlighted that the purpose of the economy was to improve people’s lives, and “the lives of the majority of Hungarians are middle-class lives.” He mentioned as a goal that people in the largest possible numbers should enter the realm where they own their own properties, where they are “self-sustaining” people who support their families from work.
Regarding economic growth, he said with all probability the economy will not speed up evenly, we can expect a more significant increase in the pace of growth in the third and fourth quarters, but compared with the years before, the first and second quarters, too, will be “fine.” In his opinion, it will be perceivable for everyone in the second half of 2025 that “we have indeed entered a new era of growth.”
The Prime Minister said Hungary has received guarantees from the European Commission that the Ukrainians will again let Russian gas through their territory. “We have received the guarantees, […] but the situation is that we must decide on the sanctions every six months, and if they fail to deliver, then we will reach a point where not only will we raise the cancellation of the sanctions, but we will actually cancel them. Meaning that if the Commission fails to observe our agreement, then the sanctions will be over,” he said.
He added that they would otherwise “take us for fools” and in the end, the Hungarian people would continue to pay the price of the sanctions, including the “Ukrainian impertinence” that while we finance their war and we give them money for the functioning of their country, they take steps with which they make the lives of European – including Hungarian – people harder.
Mr Orbán took the view that the Europeans want sanctions instead of peace, while the Americans want peace, and the sanctions serve as means for the attainment of peace.
The Prime Minister stressed that, at the same time, Hungary had never supported the sanctions. We simply accepted the fact that in Brussels 26 countries out of 27 want sanctions, and as we do not want to leave the European Union and do not want to continually stop and prevent everything, we kept saying that while the sanctions were contrary to our interests, we would not veto them because this would paralyse the entire European machinery.
“If push comes to shove, then Hungary can say that ‘everyone should take their leave and go home’ like in the poem by Petőfi. Lights out, everyone go home, sanctions over. But this is a very brutal thing, meaning that we should only resort to it if the worst comes to the worst,” said the Prime Minister, taking the view that Hungary does not have a problem with the philosophy of sanctions, but with their impact on the Hungarian economy.
Regarding the situation in Germany, the Prime Minister said, in actual fact, Brussels is destroying Germany; a good example is the punitive tariffs imposed on Chinese cars with reference to the protection of European car manufacturers. German car manufacturers are protesting against this and are suing the Brussels Commission, he added.
Hungary itself is unable to fully compensate for the effects of the Brussels mistakes, but “we can always figure something out” with which to lessen them. However, the Germans are traditionally “pro-Brussels” and so if a flawed economic policy is pursued in Brussels, they are unable to meaningfully protect themselves against it, he stated.
He said if the large Western European states fail to regain their independence, fail to stand up for themselves, and continue to “philosophise, sitting in the Brusselite bureaucratic elite’s bubble,” then the economies of Europe’s large countries “will not have much of a future.” You cannot talk to the Brusselites because “they deploy all kinds of deceptive tricks,” and so we must rebel against them, Mr Orbán argued. He indicated that the Germans already started rebelling on the issue of migration, and the moment may come when they also start rebelling in the economy.
He pointed out that this was why connectivity was important for Hungary, meaning cooperation – in addition to the Western European markets – with China, South Korea, Japan, Turkey and also the Arab world because if we fail to cooperate with the parts of the world that are developing much faster than Europe, if we fail to incorporate their resources into the Hungarian economy, we could easily find ourselves on the receiving end.
Mr Orbán expects the struggle with the Brussels bureaucrats to remain part of the Hungarian political agenda in the coming year because while the battle has already been won in the United States and over there, there is a government that serves the people’s interests, the Brussels bureaucrats have not changed, they continue to abuse their power.
The Prime Minister spoke about a list of 7 to 8 items where he expects conflicts, including the child protection legislation, the reduction of household energy bills, the issue of punitive tariffs and the lawsuit instituted by the European Parliament for the repayment by Hungary of the funds already obtained from the Commission.
