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Gábor Gönczi: I welcome Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary, to the “Tények” studio. Good evening.
Good evening.
Thank you for joining us here.
I’m very happy to be here.
Prime Minister, recently you’ve been manning the flood barriers. You greeted the floodwater when it arrived, you escorted it through the country, and – if we’re not mistaken – you bade goodbye to it.
Indeed…
You saw every moment of it.
Indeed, today I was in Dunaszekcső, near Mohács. Mohács was the last of our larger settlements that could have been endangered by the water; but it wasn’t, and the flood wave has slipped nicely out of the country.
It’s an honour that you’ve come straight from there to us, so we’ll start at the flood barrier and continue from there. Even before we get into the summary here, was there a human moment in this whole eleven- or twelve-day situation that you’ll remember for the rest of your life?
Maybe on the River Lajta [Leitha], at the very beginning, when we had to open an emergency reservoir. I’d never done anything like that before. This is our fifth term in government. I’ve led – we’ve led – the responses to five major floods. I’ve never personally had to give an order to cut through a flood barrier and release water into a reservoir area. This is what happened on the Lajta; because although the water didn’t reach a historically record high water level on the Danube, it exceeded it on the Lajta. So there was a rather intense moment there, but the farmers responded well to this necessary measure.
So let’s see where we stand. So today, can we say goodbye to the flood, can we say goodbye to the defences, to the defence operations? Or is there still something to root for, to feel nervous about?
Now we can speak about it in the past, and can say that Hungary has protected itself, and we’ve proved to ourselves for the umpteenth time that Hungary can do this.
A day ago you said that Hungary versus the Danube flood in 2024 was 1:0, but that wasn’t yet the final result. Is it now the final result?
We could call it the final result. At times like this receding water tends to be a problem, because when the barriers are affected by floodwater, unexpected events and accidents can still happen during the period of ebbing water. But we don’t expect this to happen now, because the ebb has accelerated, which is why the highest water level will leave the country two days earlier than we’d previously expected. We’re still conducting patrols with the water management authority’s staff, who have done a fantastic job, hats off to them; and perhaps they should be singled out first, as they’re still on patrol, there’s a monitoring service, there’s a standby service – but I don’t think there will be a problem. Speaking of this, all those in uniform should be mentioned: the soldiers and the police officers have worked well. Interior Minister Pintér led the operational part of the defence efforts. We only needed to redeploy 400 police officers – which is important, because the problem with major floods is that if you transfer police officers from somewhere else, there can easily be a public safety problem. We didn’t have to redeploy more police, because we had a lot of water management authority staff, a lot of volunteers, whom we thank for their work, and the soldiers performed well; and at times like this we even select those prisoners who are locked up for less serious offences, and we take out those who are able and who volunteer for this work. We’ve had hundreds of such volunteers working on the flood barriers.
And there were other volunteers, those who joined in as work progressed. Can one say that these eleven days have brought the country together again?
From a specialist point of view there’s a critical aspect to the defence operations. This isn’t usually very well known to the public. This is that there are stretches of river which are protected by the state, centrally by the state, by the Government, and there are stretches protected by local governments. And there can be unpleasant moments if there’s a lack of coordination where the two meet; and if there’s a problem with one form of defence, then of course one has to help the other. So the culture of cooperation – of working together, which has developed in previous floods – is of key importance. I may have mentioned it, but I must say that this is the fifth major flood that I’ve seen directly or that I’ve overseen as Prime Minister, and the cooperation this time was the smoothest ever. In part this is probably due to the fact that we have a well-established – or very well-established – protection system. If you compare our defence operations with what you’ve seen in neighbouring countries, the difference is obvious; and the main reason is that we have a defence system that’s been in place from the mid-1960s to the present day. Protection, water protection, doesn’t conform to the system of public administration. We have nineteen counties plus Budapest, but we have only twelve water management directorates: six in the Danube valley and six on the Tisza. So we organise protection according to the particular logic of water, not the bureaucratic logic of public administration. And since 1965, since the mid-1960s, we have practised this well. Now if someone who retired in 1968, say, could come back and start work again, they’d know exactly what to do, because the work now is the same as it was then.
And, seen from the outside, it seems to work like a high-precision machine.
It’s a great asset. The Hungarian water management system and the knowledge of the water management personnel is a particularly valuable asset for Hungary.
Yet despite that, were there any areas where it was necessary to improvise?
There always are, but now there have been ever fewer unexpected incidents, and these younger water management officials – I was more in contact with them – have learned the profession from the older ones, so we don’t have a generational problem, a problem of change. I remember how it was with the big flood on the Tisza in 2000. Seeing the much younger water management personnel of today, the knowledge of the older ones has been passed on well to their younger colleagues.
Please let’s take a brief look back at the past. Where was the situation most serious, where were the greatest human or other resources needed?
One needs to realise that the flood defences in the areas south of Budapest were well constructed some one hundred years ago or more. By contrast, up here in the hills flood protection is much more difficult, and so when we talk about floods on the Danube it’s always the upper sections that are the most difficult. There are some difficulties in Baja, because there are islands there, but the real challenge for the professionals is in the upper sections of the Danube: the Danube Bend, Esztergom, and then the Szigetköz. That was the situation here too, in the most difficult part to defend. In addition, here it’s not possible to build flood barriers everywhere, although there are still some missing sections of barrier that we will build; but there are always sections that can only be protected with temporary barriers. This is quite apart from the fact that there are Hungarians living there too. Our warnings were in vain, and people have gone ahead and built on the floodplain. You cannot protect the floodplain: the water comes in and you’ve got a problem.
Yes, and you can’t build a barrier, I suppose, on every floodplain…
We can’t do that on floodplains. It’s the same with the Római-part area [in Budapest]. So there’s an area that we can protect. The local governments designate the line of defence, and that’s what we can build. We can’t protect what’s between that and the river, on the floodplain. If it’s really bad, we can pump out a certain amount, but that won’t really help. So what’s on the floodplain is taken by the water.
You’ve said that there are always lessons to be learned. What lessons have we learned compared to 2013? What are the challenges ahead?
What happens is that after every flood, the water management authority produces a written report – these are extremely interesting reports, by the way – on what went well and what didn’t, where we need to develop and where we need to improve. They marked the stretches where it was urgent to build permanent barriers instead of temporary barriers, mobile barriers or permanent barriers. These have largely been built. The problem we had at Esztergom was that we were hit by the flood during construction work. They’re going to submit their list now, and soon the Government will discuss the water management report. We’ll decide what further work is needed on the basis of that. Few people know this, but perhaps I can tell you here that the Hungarian section of the Danube is a special section. This is because everywhere else – both from Austria upstream, and from Serbia downstream – the water level can be regulated with dams. So I think that Budapest may be the only capital city in Europe where the level of the water flowing through it cannot be regulated. Everywhere else this can be done with dams. But the Hungarians don’t want to build a dam across the Danube; for us the Danube is a sacred river, which mustn’t be defiled by building dams across it. The consequence of this is that we have to mount high defences on the river’s banks. Now, before the flood wave, the average water level in Budapest was 2 metres; but when the flood came it was 8 metres. So there was a difference of 6–6.5 metres, and this is precisely because we’re not protecting ourselves with barriers crossing the river, but with barriers built along the length of the river. This is a special feature of the Danube. From the Black Forest to the Black Sea, this is the only naturally preserved stretch of our Danube. I think it’s a great treasure. There’s always a debate about whether we should build a dam across it. I’m one of those who is wary of doing that.
What’s the secret, Prime Minister? After all, where there are dams, including across the Danube, there have been problems upstream of us: big problems, deaths…
Yes, but it’s not the Danube that bursts its banks, but its tributaries. So it’s fair to say that we’ve done an outstanding job of defence, even by international standards. But it’s also true that we always have a two- or three-day advantage over other countries, because there the water comes down their mountains, and that’s where the trouble is immediate. By the time the water gets here two or three days have passed, and we’re better prepared to defend ourselves. So we’ve defended well, that’s true, but we also have a positional advantage.
I was looking at the flood information this morning, when the news was essentially good, and when you were joined by [Chief Medical Officer] Cecilia Müller. We knew the reason for this; because although we tend to think that the water will recede and that will be the end of everything, it isn’t the end of everything, and a very important phase in the flood defence operations is now beginning.
At such times there’s a public health task to be done. This is because, whether we like it or not, the Danube sometimes flows into sewers and floods them, and constructed or temporary defences and sandbags coming into contact with the water can easily become contaminated. And then we have to do public sanitation and restoration work. There’s a strict protocol on how to take down the barriers, what to do, and Cecilia is keeping that in order.
And this will take how many days? How long will it take?
From what I know of her, it won’t last long. Yes, we’ll soon be over it.
Can we already see how much damage has been done?
Not much damage, considering that the water remained within the river’s banks. With houses built on the floodplain, everyone who built there expected what would happen, so we don’t usually include that in the damage. There was some agricultural damage, because on the River Lajta we had to release water into temporary reservoirs. These are areas in private ownership, typically farmland; but there the harvest had already occurred, so there was no major damage there either. And the cost of the defence operations? I’d rather say that the big item is the cost of defences, lots of people on the barriers, material costs, technical costs, overtime, the cost of people’s wages. So those are the areas where the costs mount up.
Yes, we’ve heard huge numbers. Two million sandbags. What did you say? Was that 5,500 tonnes of sand?
Around 5,500 tonnes of sand, that was put in bags with shovels.
Which will now come out of the bags. Plus these 6,000 people who worked on the flood defences.
The country has done a tremendous job. This was a big flood. So now that it’s over, we talk about it a little lightly, about the whole thing, but…
Thank God!
…yes, but it was a big flood. So this will go down in the history of Hungarian water management as one of the biggest floods ever experienced on the Danube, and we were in serious danger. So now, of course, anecdotes will come to mind, and spiritually uplifting moments. But there were also dangerous times, and this could have been a big problem if the cooperation between those involved in the defence operations hadn’t been so smooth.
This is an important question: will Hungary be left to its own resources to meet these defence costs, can it finance them, and can we nudge Brussels and ask for help like other countries?
In Brussels, money for such purposes is as uncertain as the wind. This is why I always tell everyone that we shouldn’t deal with Brussels, but with Budapest and ourselves. Let’s get the job done. We must be able to defend Hungary without Brussels or anyone else. This is our country, and no one else will defend it for us. We have to go out, we have to defend it, we have to put in the hours, we have to be able to cover the costs of it. And then if someone somewhere is willing to cover at least part of the costs, then we’ll respectfully thank them. But let’s not build our lives on that.
Of course. But do we have a chance?
One tries.
We try, yes. Prime Minister, the flood actually came upon us in a difficult historical situation. Thank God we remember it as a success story. But the war is still with us, it hasn’t ended, the European Union is struggling with very serious competitiveness problems, and yet the Hungarian economy is performing well compared to the EU average. What do you think is the reason for this?
We’re going through two great periods of trouble, as you’ve mentioned, although this is only tangentially related to water management issues. One is the war. This is a problem because a huge number of people are dying, and that’s always a problem; and what’s more it’s in a neighbouring country, with Christian people fighting an internecine war. And while Europe’s population is shrinking, in the east of the continent people are killing one another. So it’s not only painful, but it’s absurd. And the other problem or challenge that we face is that in the meantime – and we’ve been seeing this for many, many years now – the world economy is being completely transformed. So there’s an immediate problem that stems from the war, but apart from that there’s also a great transformation of the world economy; and the big question for the future is who will be able to adapt well to this. And Europe isn’t leading the way in this, and I’m extremely pessimistic about Europe’s capabilities. The question is whether Hungary understands what’s happening, whether it knows how to adapt, and whether it can do it. Now that the water has receded, we’ll address this question. This is the really big question for the next one or two months: a completely new world economy, and whether Hungarians have the adaptability to make Hungary successful.
You’re optimistic in this respect.
I have a good plan.
A good vision.
I’ll present it tomorrow, or at least the most essential elements of it. I’m giving a speech at the National University of Public Service, where there’s a conference on competitiveness. Our position, my position, is that the great powers are now working to split the single world economy into two. This has happened before: I lived for 26 years in an era of a divided world economy, with the Comecon on one side and the free market on the other. But now I see that they’re building and tearing the world economy into two, and they want to force countries like us to stand either here or there. And I don’t think we should accept that. My assertion is that in this era of a world economy that’s being split into two, Hungary must preserve its economic neutrality – and not only preserve it, but also build an economic neutrality. If we can do this, and I believe it can be done, then Hungary will be successful. If not, then we’ll be subordinated to the countries of one of the blocs; and then once again it won’t be the Hungarians who benefit from their work, but others.
Prime Minister, we’ve had the flood, and tomorrow we’ll have a new economic policy, so you won’t get much rest.
I’ll have a good night.
Then I wish you good night and a good night’s sleep.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for joining us.
Thank you for having me.
