At the ceremony held at the Kenderes rest area of the express road, the Prime Minister thanked former Minister of Agriculture Sándor Fazekas who played a major role in the construction of the road and who, in his words, insisted as minister that the M4 be included in the national road development and construction programme.
“Additionally, I learnt the wisdom from him that a good election is when people go to cast their votes on steaming asphalt. I said, Sándor, there isn’t as much asphalt in the world as many mandates we need,” the Prime Minister said.
He said today the government is delivering on a promise: the government pledged to bring express roads to the Kunság region.
This region is a major and rich reserve of Hungary, the Prime Minister stated, stressing that Fidesz-Christian Democratic People’s Party is the only political community which has a Great Plain programme.
He recalled that in 2010 unemployment stood at 12 per cent in the Kunság region; now it is at five per cent. As part of the Demján Sándor Programme, funds worth HUF 4.5 billion have been channelled to the businesses of Szolnok County, “we have completed the hospital in Karcag, we have refurbished it completely, and we have also built a fantastic leisure centre.”
The truly great item of expenditure was, in actual fact, the construction of two roads, the M4 and the M44 as without these, the middle segment of the Great Plain would have remained a secluded area, the Prime Minister stressed, adding that the completion of the M4 requires the construction of another section of sixty kilometres from Kisújszállás, and this will be built in a concession scheme.
In the past 15 years, the government has built a length of motorways and express roads with which the Hungarian network of motorways and express roads, calculated in relation to population, has reached the level of the most advanced Western European countries, he laid down.
Mr Orbán stressed that while in 2010 the total length of express roads in Hungary was just 1,273 kilometres, by 2025 this has reached 35 kilometres short of 2,000 kilometres. He added that they had additionally built eight bridges on the Danube and the Tisza, and now as many as 22 county-ranked cities could be reached via express roads.
All in all, this means that 90 per cent of Hungarians live within a distance of half an hour from a motorway, he stated, adding that if the government is able to complete all its projects, this number will increase to 100, while the distance expressed in time will be reduced from 30 minutes to just 20.
He also drew attention to the fact that when the motorway finally reaches Berettyóújfalu and on the other side of the border the Romanians, too, complete the necessary works, it will be possible to directly access the express roads leading in the direction of Nagyvárad-Kolozsvár [Oradea-Cluj Napoca]. According to even the most conservative estimates, this means that the travel time between Budapest and Kolozsvár will decrease by an hour to ninety minutes, he said, stressing that today’s inauguration is therefore an important moment in the unification of the nation.
Regarding the development of the southern part of East Hungary, he said the government has major plans, the goal is to create a Debrecen-Nagyszalonta [Salonta]-Békéscsaba industrial region which will be a major crossborder economic region. Therefore, he said in continuation, they will also build the Békéscsaba-Debrecen four-lane express road.
He stressed that they would make every effort to implement also here those significant industrial projects which opened up prospects for growth similar to those in the northern part of the Great Plain. He observed that “we have given the development of the northern region a rather good push,” there, industrial projects have been implemented on a scale that “the time may slowly come” when people come from Sopron to work in Nyíregyháza.
The Prime Minister pointed out that you needed money for the construction of roads. At the same time, there is money if we do not allow others to take it away from us. Mr Orbán said he just came back from Brussels where “a little dumpling called Ukraine wants to devour all the money in the world.” The “smart Brussels masters” decided to give Ukraine a loan of EUR 90 billion, evidently in the hope that they will recover it with fair interest on top, he added.
Mr Orbán said, at the expense of a major fight, Hungary managed to stay out of this “crazy Brussels idea.” However, had Hungary not been able to stay out, a share of HUF 400 billion would have fallen on Hungary. The road section now inaugurated cost HUF 170 billion, the section yet to be built will also cost around the same, meaning that Hungary would have been required to hand over to Brussels a sum that is effectively the equivalent of the total construction cost of this express road, he pointed out.
This money has a better place here on the Great Plain, in the form of a modern road than “in Donbas shot to pieces,” in the pocket of some Ukrainian oligarch, he stated.
Mr Orbán highlighted: it is also at stake in next year’s elections which way we will be heading. We can head out on the Brussels path which means that our money is taken away from here to someplace else, is used somewhere else and serves the development of others, he said.
The other option is to stay on the Hungarian path, and carry on as we have done in the past 15 years, and then Hungary will be able to develop, grow and strengthen, he stressed.
This naturally requires that the government parties retain all their mandates from this region, Mr Orbán indicated, adding that without the Kunság region and the Great Plain, no patriotic national government can come into being in Hungary.
“If the Cumanians are with us, if we have the Kunság region with us, if we have the Great Hungarian Plain with us, then whatever happens in Budapest, we will win these elections,” the Prime Minister said at the end of his speech, asking members of the local electorate for their trust.
More news
