Gábor Gönczi: I welcome Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary, to the Tények studio. Thank you for joining us.
Good evening, and thank you for having me.
Prime Minister, as we’ve seen, one of the most important tasks of the anti-war rallies has been to explain what the absolutely necessary conditions are for Hungary to avoid war and never get involved in it. Now, a few days ago, you arrived with what we could call the good news that we’ve avoided an immediate threat to our lives. What does that immediate threat to our lives mean? And what does it mean that we’ve avoided it?
We hold anti-war rallies so that we can jointly think about a phenomenon that we haven’t encountered for many, many decades: Europe being threatened by war. They allow us to think this through, understand it, and prepare ourselves to oppose any event that would draw us in, suck us into this war. They give me an opportunity to explain to the general public what usually happens behind closed doors in the negotiating rooms in Brussels, how Europe is preparing for war, what is threatening Hungary, what I need to do, how one needs to argue, and how one needs to shrewdly manoeuvre so that in the end we can stay out of the next step in the war. In Brussels this weekend European leaders did indeed hold a council of war. I wouldn’t call it a political consultation, because 90 per cent of the speakers were talking about how to defeat Russia.
That sounds frightening. We’ve been talking about war for years, but why is it that we’re so close to it now? And why are we saying that there was an immediate threat to life?
We got close to it because Donald Trump won the election in the United States and took office in January. They’d wanted to shoot him, they’d wanted to lock him up, everything was tried; but they couldn’t stop him, and in the end he became the President of the United States. And he’s doing exactly what he said he’d do – except until then no one had taken him seriously. He said he’d do everything he could for peace. And since Europeans want war and Americans want peace, the Americans have effectively ceased to function as a restraining force in European politics. A rift has emerged between the United States and Europe, with Europeans openly saying that they’ll continue to arm, finance and support Ukraine – even in spite of the will of America, even in spite of Trump’s attempts at peace. And now they’re even talking about sending peacekeeping troops there. Previously within NATO it was unthinkable for something to happen if the US had rejected it. But this is the situation now. So a restraining force has disappeared, and this is why we’re getting closer and closer to the moment when Europe could enter a direct and immediate war with Russia – even in opposition to the will of the United States. We’re closer to this than the Hungarian public imagines, and anti-war rallies are needed in order for people to understand and experience the immediacy of this danger.
A terrible theory has recently arisen in connection with Russian frozen assets, but now the news has come from Brussels that this has finally been shelved.
Yes, it was a German military plan. This was predicated on the fact that Russia owns 230 billion euros worth of assets – referred to as foreign exchange reserves – in Western Europe, and that this money had been frozen and seized, and wouldn’t be returned to Russia. And the German idea was to take this money and give it to Ukraine. So there are two warring parties, and a third party – us – comes in from outside, takes a huge amount of money from one of the warring parties and gives it to its enemy. What kind of relationship will develop between us and the party from whom we took the money – Russia? At that moment, we’ll find ourselves in a hostile situation and become open enemies of Russia. The Russians won’t let pass without comment, and we’ll already be at war. This is what had to be prevented. I wasn’t the one who prevented it, but undoubtedly I was…
You were one of those who had said that this mustn’t be done.
…among those… Yes, yes, I added my own opinion, and I was right. But, you know, sometimes the truth isn’t enough to prevent something, because what’s also needed is strength. And here the decisive push ultimately came from the heroic stance of the Belgian prime minister in Brussels; despite being battered for several days, he stood his ground manfully and said “no” to the Germans. And once this situation had developed, this conflict had arisen, in the end the Italians and the French decided that Belgium couldn’t be left on its own; and so it was the Germans – still pushing their proposal – who were left alone.
But ultimately, what happened was what you predicted should happen.
Yes. It wasn’t my job to ride ahead like a hussar, but instead I spun my web in the background like an old spider, until, in the end, this situation was brought about by the collective will of many.
So in the end, the immediate threat to life was averted. But then the next theory came along – which was that the European Union should take out a huge loan and give it to Ukraine. So ultimately it still wants to give Ukraine something to keep the war going.
Yes. The direction hasn’t changed. Yes, we’ll have a war-free Christmas, but the threat of war hasn’t passed. This is because, with the exception of the Slovaks, Czechs and Hungarians, all the other Member States of the Union are moving towards war. They’re heading in that direction – not rushing in, but just moving in that direction. And they decided not to give Ukraine the frozen Russian assets, because that would immediately lead to war, and the Belgians would be ruined in two seconds, as Russian retaliatory measures would destroy Brussels – I mean Belgium – economically. So they decided to give Ukraine money in a different way, which was to give it 90 billion euros over two years. Yes, but the EU doesn’t have the money! So we had to figure out how to give money, even though we don’t have any. And they decided that together we’d go to the bankers, ask them for a loan, and lend that money to Ukraine – knowing full well that the money we lend to Ukraine will never be repaid. So in the end, we, the EU Member States, would have to stand by the bankers to ensure that they get their money back. Now, since the loan has to be guaranteed, the question was this: Who will take on that responsibility? And then the Slovaks, the Czechs and the Hungarians said, “Thank you very much, but we’re not willing to participate in this. If you want to do it, go ahead, but we don’t want to put a single penny of our taxpayers’ money into such a dubious loan manoeuvre, and we won’t participate in it.” And so we stayed out of it, while now the others are in a fix, in my opinion – although they don’t call it that, but instead a “joint loan”.
Prime Minister, now, beyond the fact that this won’t cost Hungarian families any money…
It would have cost 400 billion, by the way.
It would have.
Yes. We’ve earned 400 billion forints, because that’s the amount by which these loans won’t burden the lives of our children and grandchildren.
So you came home from Brussels saying that we won’t pay this money, and that’s absolutely certain.
That’s a fact.
Beyond this, it’s also significant that if – God forbid – there really is a war, then we’re not involved in it.
First of all, whatever we do, even immediately before a direct war, sooner or later the Russians will take countermeasures, economic countermeasures. They’ve already taken certain countermeasures – for example, Western European companies operating in Russia can’t take their profits out of Russia, but must place those amounts in a separate account. Overall, if we look at what assets the twenty-seven EU Member States have in Russia, what assets private companies have in Russia, then I have to say that we have more assets in Russia than the Russians assets in Europe which have been seized. So if the Russians decide to seize the Western European assets they hold, including Hungarian assets, we’ll lose more than if we seize theirs here. For some reason Westerners think that if we seize Russian assets here and send them elsewhere, then there will be no retaliatory measures – or if there are, they’ll affect private companies but not states. And if private companies go under, they go under. It’s been mentioned several times that we’re asking for guarantees on the very significant assets that Hungary has in Russia, where we have major healthcare, animal health, instrument technology and energy companies operating. They’re working in Russia today with significant assets, and it’s in our fundamental interest that these assets there, these corporate assets, aren’t lost.
Now that we’re not participating in this loan scheme, it won’t cost Hungarian families any money. But what’s our task? Because the threat of war hasn’t passed. The immediate danger to life may have passed, but the threat of war hasn’t. Okay, now it’s Christmas, we have a few days, but then we have to go back and continue the fight. What exactly does this fight consist of?
Yes. Now, whoever gains time gains life; that’s the stage we’re at now. Here time means two things. The first is that American–Russian negotiations are ongoing, and it’s quite possible that these negotiations will be successfully concluded, despite European opposition. And then, with the Ukrainians also involved, a ceasefire – but perhaps even a more lasting peace – can be achieved. This is one thing we can be hopeful about. The other is that in Western Europe the big trick has failed. The big trick was that the Westerners said, “This war won’t cost you any money, because we’ll pay for it out of Russian assets.” This trick was sold not only in Germany, but in almost every Western European country.
They may be in quite a bit of trouble.
But now it turns out that this isn’t the case. And, bearing in mind the fact that he who gains time gains life, I believe that in the coming period public opinion in Western European countries opposing this will make itself heard increasingly loudly. In Germany and France – but also in other countries – it seems that there are already more people opposed to the war than in favour of it. But this financial risk, this cost that Western European countries are now throwing themselves into, will, in my opinion, quickly tip public opinion in Western European countries into an anti-war position, and the people will be able to restrain their leaders – the Western European leaders – from marching into a war.
You don’t need to be held back, because you’ve been saying this from the beginning, ever since the war broke out: the following day you said what should be and must be.
Well, we lost two world wars, two-thirds of our country’s territory, most of our population, and our raw material resources. Then when we got some of it back, we lost it again. This is because we were the losers and, together with the Germans, we were forced to pay reparations. Once again this took a lot of money out of the country. A total of 1.5 million Hungarians died in the two world wars. The Soviets came in, and 200,000 Hungarians fled immediately after World War II. Then 200,000 Germans were deported from Hungary, and in 1956, another 150,000 to 200,000 Hungarians left. So for a Hungarian, war is the most terrible thing that can happen. Our reflexes are those of a nation that went through two world wars with very serious human and material losses, and we know how it consumes decades of work: apart from the fact that children and grandchildren die, we know how a war consumes a nation’s future and decades of work. So that’s our reflex. But to the west of us, for some reason, leaders feel more secure, and they don’t have that gut feeling, that basic instinct, that makes them immediately say “no” to war. Instead they speculate, and then – and this is the essence of the matter – ever more players come in who, as time goes by, have an ever greater interest in the war. At first it’s only the politicians who scheme, but then the military industry appears – because war requires weapons. The economy switches to a war economy, and they start producing equipment and weapons. There are good profits in this, and many people make money from it. Then a business circle is created that has an interest in maintaining the arms race and the war. Then it turns out that there’s no money for the war, so loans have to be taken out – and then the bankers arrive. They say, “We don’t want to lose our money. When will we get our money back? The answer is when the enemy, in this case Russia, has been defeated and when the Russians pay reparations – as we did after the two world wars. And the bankers are also pushing the politicians into war. Although in theory no one wants war, everyone knows that it’s a terrible thing, somehow driving forces are created that result in the politicians lurching into war. This is exactly what happened in World War I. Europe has experience of this, which we Hungarians remember vividly – while others, unfortunately, only remember it vaguely.
That’s right, and for this it takes more than just gut instinct; it also requires the recognition of what stage we’re at in this whole process – and it seems that this isn’t entirely clear in Hungary either. This is why there have been anti-war rallies. Of course, the election is imminent, and whether or not we can continue to pursue this philosophy is by no means irrelevant.
Over the next three to four months there will be a further sharpening of the dividing line that I believe is currently the most significant and powerful one in European and Hungarian politics. There are those who favour war, and there are those who favour peace. In Europe, for example, the Germans favour war. The European People’s Party is led by the Germans. The leader of the European People’s Party is also the most powerful leader in the European Parliament, and he’s a German. The President of the Commission is a German. The German chancellor is leader of the largest Member State. They all belong to the same club, to the European People’s Party – the party of war. It has a foothold in Hungary, because Tisza belongs to that party. Tisza is a party of war. On the other side in Brussels there’s us, the Patriots, with parties from across Europe that all want peace. So in Hungary Tisza is the war party, and Fidesz–KDNP is the peace party. In Europe, the European People’s Party is the war party, and the Patriots for Europe are the peace party. This is the structure of European politics today.
But, Prime Minister, I’ll translate that. This is a matter of life and death.
Yes, if I want to put it more rationally, I’d say that the Europeans have announced – the war party, which is in the majority, has announced – that Europe must be ready to fight a war with Russia by 2030. If this is the case, and it’s still the case, then the last Hungarian parliamentary election before the expected war will be in 2026. This will be the last election before the war. Therefore what’s at stake in this election is the question of war or peace.
That sounds very, very bad.
No, that sounds good. It sounds good because in Hungary the pro-peace forces are in the majority, Hungary has a pro-peace government, and the biggest political forces in Hungary are Fidesz and the KDNP. This political camp has international backing in Europe from the Patriots, it has an ally in America who’s also pro-peace, and we shall not allow ourselves to be pushed into war. This isn’t bad news; the situation is bad, but the Hungarian news is good.
Indeed that’s true. Prime Minister, in conclusion, so we can leave the topic of war aside for a moment, are there any estimates of how much this war has cost us Hungarians so far? And, if our minds, souls, and heads aren’t in the right place, how much more could it cost us?
There are estimates for this. Experts say around 20 billion euros, which seems to be a realistic estimate. But in a war, everything’s swept away, everything’s lost. So we can make calculations showing that if there’s a small war there will be small losses, and if there’s a big war, there will be big losses, but that’s not what Hungarian history shows: it shows that whenever there’s a war, everything’s swept away. And so we must anchor ourselves to peace. But we have a better chance of doing that than we had in World War I, and we have a better chance than we had in World War II. I say this from my own personal perspective and point of view. István Tisza, the Hungarian prime minister, wanted to stay out of World War I, but he didn’t succeed: Vienna pushed István Tisza and his government into the war. Miklós Horthy also wanted to stay out of the war, but he didn’t succeed: the Germans pushed him into the war. We – and I – will succeed, I’m convinced of that.
May it be so, Prime Minister! While the Government was fighting its battle abroad, in Brussels, it was also fighting its battle at home. And we’ve often talked about the fact that, however difficult 2025 has been abroad, at home it’s been possible to carry out a tax revolution that’s been felt by Hungarian families and Hungarian businesses. And young people, the elderly and those who want to work have had access to a wealth of opportunities that had never existed before. This is unique, so it’s been called a tax revolution. What have the most important achievements been?
Well, I had to incubate this for a long time, if I may put it like that – we spent six months sitting on it. My plan was to launch the measures we’d planned for this year at the beginning of the year, based on the assumption that the new US president would come in and be able to rally the Europeans behind him, and that peace would be achieved in the first quarter. That didn’t happen. There is still no peace. So we were faced with a historic dilemma, an economic dilemma: while the war continues and the sanctions imposed by Brussels continue to block the entire European economy, including the Hungarian economy, with growth at around 1 per cent at most, is it acceptable to launch programmes that would be completely natural in times of peace? After six months we came to the conclusion that we could take the risk of launching these programmes. We launched a first-time home purchase loan for young people with a fixed interest rate of 3 per cent. We gave small and medium-sized businesses loans with a fixed interest rate of 3 per cent. We doubled the tax credit for families with children in two steps. We launched the fourteenth month’s pension, the first weekly instalment of which we’ll pay out at the beginning of next year. Mothers with two or three children have received lifetime income tax exemption, which is unprecedented anywhere in the world. We’ve made childcare allowances tax-free. And in the end we’ve even been able to reach an agreement with the Chamber of Commerce on a 90-billion-euro tax reduction package or action plan for small and medium-sized enterprises. So I can say that, yes, we couldn’t start these things immediately, but by the end of the year, by now, essentially all of these programmes have been launched. This is despite the fact that we’re taking a risk, because we’re the only ones doing such things in a period of preparation for war. Look at the Western Europeans: they’re not doing this – they’re switching to a wartime economy. So the economic policy announced in Brussels is about switching to a wartime economy. Hungary is doing the opposite. Time will tell who made the right decision.
Yes, there are many critics of this…
Not by chance.
…who ask how this will be sustainable. And we’ve seen the Tisza Party’s tax plan package, which basically outlines the withdrawal of all you’ve talked about.
Well, that’s the other path. So that package, Tisza’s package, its programme, is exactly what Brussels is doing. So anyone who thinks that what Brussels is doing is good should definitely vote for the Tisza Party, because Tisza’s programme is Brussels’ programme. We’re doing the opposite. Let me repeat: I’m not saying that it’s impossible to make a logical argument in favour of a very harsh austerity package like Tisza’s. But that would mean us switching to a war economy. Then there would be no fourteenth month’s pension, or even a thirteenth month’s pension; there would be no family support system; no first home creation for young people; no fixed 3 per cent loans for small and medium-sized enterprises. None of that would exist, and it would be a different world. But I think that Hungary mustn’t step onto that Brusselite path: it must stay on its own Hungarian path. I think this path is viable, even if the other side is right that there are difficult technical issues that will have to be answered as we follow the path of Hungarian economic policy. But that’s life, and we’ll answer them.
And it’s very interesting because there’s also a third front: there’s the foreign dimension, keeping the war out; there are these lots of new opportunities; and then there are our reductions in household energy bills, which are also being attacked by everyone – from abroad, from within the country, from everywhere. That’s another aspect of how things should be done.
That’s a very difficult issue. This is about the fact that the Americans have imposed sanctions on companies that buy Russian oil and natural gas. In Washington I had to arrange for the President to withdraw this. I made an agreement with him, and we agreed that it will remain in force for as long as he’s President and I’m Prime Minister. We both hope that we’ll live forever, by the way. The other thing is that we had to agree with the Russians that even though Russian energy facilities are being hit by military strikes, we’ll still receive the amount of natural gas and oil that we want or have contracted for. We received a guarantee for that. Then we had to go to Istanbul and agree with the Turkish president that the natural gas coming from Russia through Türkiye from a southerly direction – bypassing the Ukrainians – would be pushed on through the pipeline system by the Turks and arrive in Hungary. We did that too.
It was a complex story.
That’s how it is. Our profession has its beauties – both intellectual and foreign policy beauties. With Minister Péter Szijjártó we finally worked out the positions with which, in all three capitals, we could negotiate what Hungary needs. So I have to say that for Hungarians in the coming years we can guarantee the cheapest utility costs in Europe – if this government remains in power, because there’s another view: Tisza and Brussels both say that such a subsidy system for utilities shouldn’t be created. They say that it’s not good, that it’s humbug. They say all sorts of things: that it distorts prices, taking them away from their market levels. That’s true, but it distorts them in favour of the people; meanwhile they think that we should return to market prices and to what they have in Western Europe, and that Hungarians should also pay higher energy bills. I understand the logic behind this, but I think that even if it can be derived from some theory on paper, in reality it will kill us – and so we mustn’t do it.
Prime Minister, I heard you say at an anti-war rally that you’d undertaken to ensure that we wouldn’t be small and poor, but big and rich. Where are we in the implementation of this plan?
We’re more than half way through, which is good news. So after World War I, when the Hungary of Saint Stephen came to an end – not because it ended naturally, but because it was brought to an end – our enemies forced peace upon us. And behind that was the intention that the Hungarians, who until then had been great and rich in the monarchy, should henceforth be small and poor. I think every government since then has accepted that verdict as a given, and has tried to live with it or survive it. I will never accept this, even though, of course, all such agreements – both after World War I and after World War II – are binding under international law. We don’t want to overturn the international order, but we want Hungary to be great, to have reason for self-respect, to have reason for glory, to be a great nation that commands respect – and for this to be obvious to the whole world. At the same time, we want to have great economic successes that are not only good for the national economy, but also enrich Hungarian families. And we want Hungarians to be rich – or let’s be more modest: we want them to be well-off. This is what I’ve undertaken to do. To do this, we’ve had to break quite a few taboos, introduce a completely new tax system, put families at the centre, send the IMF home, and involve large multinationals in bearing the burden of public taxation. And we still have a lot of work to do in order to get to the point where we can truly say that Hungarians are a nation of well-off families. Today we opened another section of motorway, we’re going to build many hundreds of kilometres of roads and motorways, and huge railway construction projects are about to begin. We’ll introduce tax exemptions for families in several stages: first for mothers under the age of 40 with two children, then for mothers under the age of 50 with two children. We now have 15,000 first-home creation loan contracts, and we’ll be increasing this number to well over 100,000. So I feel that despite Hungary being in a very difficult international environment, it has good reason to choose a path on which it doesn’t give up on its dream of not simply governing skilfully, but of changing dimension – and, after having lost in the 20th century, winning in the 21st century. Twenty-five years of the 21st century have already passed. We have no time to waste.
Prime Minister, there are only a few days left, Christmas will be here in two days, and Baby Jesus is on his way. When you were a child, what did you like most about Christmas?
Oranges, because we didn’t usually have them. Oranges were only available at Christmas, and that’s why – ever since I was a child, and probably until the day I die – in my mind Christmas will always be associated with the smell of oranges.
And what do you like best now?
Now I like it when the children come home. We have five children, and they’ve all left. Imagine a house…
They’ve flown the nest.
…where there were seven of us, with barely enough room, with noise and commotion – and suddenly it’s just my wife and me. And there are only two occasions a year when suddenly everything is like it used to be: at Easter and at Christmas. Because then the children come home.
So you manage to make this happen. One last sentence, Prime Minister. What’s your message to Hungarian families for Christmas? At the end of the year, what should we put under the tree as a guiding principle?
Peace. Peace: I suggest that we understand what we learn from the Scriptures, “Love your neighbour as yourself”. I consider the part of this sentence that says we must love ourselves to be important. But loving oneself is not the same as self-worship; loving oneself is something like appreciating what one has achieved. So I suggest that Hungarians learn and strengthen within themselves the sense that there are things we’ve achieved and accomplished that we must appreciate: our successes. A good marriage is a success, a new house is a success, a child we’ve raised well is a success. A friend we’ve managed to keep – these are all successes. So after losing the 20th century, I want Hungarians to be able to see themselves as winners, not to underestimate what they’ve achieved in life, but to appreciate what great things they’ve been able to do in their own personal lives. If they can think this through and talk about it calmly by the tree, then there will be peace; and if there’s peace, then there will be a bright future and a bright new year in 2026.
Prime Minister, thank you very much for the interview, and we wish you a Blessed Christmas!
I wish you all the same!
More news
