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At the closing conference of parliamentary events attached to last year’s Hungarian EU presidency, Mr Orbán also spoke about the idea that we should admit Ukraine to the European Union, laying down that the Hungarians respect and try to understand views differing from theirs. He added that multiple European nations wanted to provide further support for Ukraine in order that it may continue the war. We have a different view on this, we believe that the longer the war lasts, the more human lives will be lost and the worse the situation will become on the battlefield, he indicated.
He stressed that the European Commission’s proposal to make detachment from Russian energy carriers compulsory due to the war would simply kill the Hungarian economy. “Just imagine that the price of energy for households and businesses doubles all of a sudden. Hungarian families wouldn’t be able to endure this,” he said, adding that also for this reason the Hungarians want peace, and would like to get rid of the policy of economic sanctions, too, as swiftly as possible.
He also said as a country neighbouring Ukraine, we believe that if Ukraine is admitted to the European Union, the war, too, will be admitted along with it. He recalled that the EU had never before admitted a country at war, for good reason. Additionally, Ukraine’s membership would impose an economic burden that the Member States would not be able to endure. He further recalled that the earlier members, too, had benefited from the EU accession of the countries of Central Europe. Ukraine is, however, a different matter, we would fare badly. It is a bad deal. A crisis in agriculture, unemployment, indebtedness, a fall in living standards, he warned.
The Prime Minister highlighted that today, a transformation was taking place in the world on a scale which was only comparable with the birth of modern nation states, the Peace of Westphalia. The world is undergoing a transformation, the mentality of the western world, too, is changing, and we Europeans must respond to this, he added.
He asked the attendees of the conference to engage in a dialogue about two strategic issues – the protection of national sovereignty and the EU accession of Ukraine – because these issues will decide the fate of EU Member States for the decades ahead and will designate the role of national parliaments.
He pointed out that in the United States the programme of progressive liberalism had failed, and its place had been taken by a patriotic policy which had serious international implications. In his view, what happened in the United States was “not a mere election accident,” but the beginning of a new era: in the past 80 years, the United States had had a vested interest in maintaining the liberal international order. Now, however, it began to dismantle this because it no longer sees it as the line best suited to its own interests.
Meanwhile, he said in continuation, China is charging forward at full speed, and is now a match not only in industrial capacity, but also in terms of the quality of its technology. India, too, is preparing to enter the stage of world politics, and as the world’s most populous country, it has every quality to become a global power centre comparable with China.
At the same time, Europe is unprepared. “It’s as if we wanted to solve the problems of the next decade with the answers of the previous decade, but the old truths no longer apply, the world has changed, and we Europeans have failed to follow it,” he said.
The Prime Minister indicated that he had been a member of the European Council for 15 years, and had had first-hand experience of the lost years, the drifting of the past period. He observed that if we had led Hungary the way the Commission led Europe, we would have gone under a long time ago.
He said the western strategy aimed to break Russia has failed. “No one dares to admit it, but we have lost this war,” he added, drawing attention to the fact that Russia’s economy has not collapsed, the sanctions have not achieved their goals, and the Russians have foiled Ukraine’s NATO membership. He indicated that the Americans had recognised this, and now they were engaged in talks. Meanwhile, “we Europeans” are continuing the war, and pretend that we can win.
“I hope I won’t be right, but in the end, we will be left all alone with the war in our neighbourhood, whilst spending all our money on an unattainable victory,” he stated. He took the view that Europe had abandoned its successful economic strategy that had been based on cheap Russian energy and advanced German technology, but there was no new strategy to replace it. “We’re standing in the middle of nothing,” he said.
He stressed that today US and Chinese companies had access to energy at a third or quarter of the price paid by European businesses because due to the sanctions, cheap energy had disappeared from Europe. The sanctions combined with the green deal are ruining the European economy, he laid down.
The European economy is retreating, rather than competing, he said, adding that today there are only four Europeans among the world’s fifty largest technological firms. The difference between the European and US GDP has doubled in the past twenty years in favour of the Americans; since 2000, the real income per capita has grown twice as fast in the United States as in the EU, he listed.
We would need a new strategy and strong European leaders, he stated.
Mr Orbán said today Europe is rich and poor, and this is the most dangerous combination. Therefore, Europe must be reinforced. Europe became strong and a world political factor after the Peace of Westphalia and the coming into being of nation states, and the European Union, too, could become successful through the cooperation of nation states and the strong leaders of strong national democracies, he added.
He said in Europe there is no strong and successful nation state without a strong national parliament, and the EU has national parliaments to thank for everything.
He argued that national parliaments were the historical scenes and laboratories for the formulation of European constitutionality and democracy. The common European values that are so often referred to in Brussels were, in actual fact, conceived in the halls and on the corridors of national parliaments, he pointed out.
If the EU wants to be successful, it must give more respect to national parliaments which are not artificial institutions created by treaties, but actual agencies serving to represent the people which came into being through an integral process of evolution, and this must not be forgotten in Brussels, either, he added.
He said “it is therefore disagreeable and arrogant when bureaucrats never elected by anybody lecture the leaders of national institutions and elected deputies about democracy and values.”
The Prime Minister said they have seen for 15 years that whenever Europe found itself up against a problem, the Brussels answer has always been the same: more powers for Brussels, less scope for the nation states. And the result is that the problem has always been aggravated, rather than lessened, he pointed out, mentioning the financial crisis, migration, the energy crisis and the war as examples.
Mr Orbán said those who resist centralisation and the stealthy withdrawal of powers, those who defend the boundaries of the nation state are threatened with being denied EU funds. If this does not help, Brussels thwarts national governments, interferes and topples them, helping “agent parties” of their choice – surrendering national sovereignty – to power, he said. They tried this in Hungary in 2018 and also in 2022, but they failed, they are now trying for a third time, he observed.
In continuation, the Prime Minister said things have spiralled so out of control that in the case of Hungary they openly admit that they want to ruin its economy in order to “replace the national government with a puppet government to their liking serving Brussels interests.” He added that the founding fathers had not established the EU for this. This will not result in a strong Europe, this will only lead to a weak Europe.
Mr Orbán said meanwhile “the Brussels NGO scandal” is escalating, meaning that the Brussels bureaucracy channelled public funds in the magnitude of hundreds of millions of euros to organisations which were nothing more than advocates, lobbyists of a federal Europe. This cannot be described in any other way than “as an attempted coup against national parliaments,” he stated.
According to the Prime Minister, the question is what national parliaments can do “against the Brussels supranational steamroller.” He drew attention to the resolution adopted by the Hungarian Parliament in connection with the future of the EU which proposes, among others, the deletion from the treaties of the principle of an ever closer union, the laying down in the treaties of Europe’s Christian roots and culture as well as of the political and ideological neutrality of the European Commission, and the reinforcement of the principle of subsidiarity.
If we indeed want to build a strong Europe, then national parliaments must be given not a bit part, but a leading role. “We Members of National Parliaments have a duty to undertake our role, and we Hungarians are ready to do so. Make Europe Great Again,” Mr Orbán said, concluding his speech.
