Mr Orbán said they want to stay out, but the Tisza Party and DK [Democratic Coalition] do not. If the incumbent government parties win the elections, peace will remain; if the opposition wins the elections, we will be heading for war, he stated. They belong to the European war agitating party alliance, they are the Hungarian lieutenants of the European pro-war forces, Manfred Weber, the European chief of the Tisza Party is the number one war agitator in Europe, he pointed out.
If a pro-Brussels government is formed here, then they will push us into the war and the economic policy which finances the war. That is a war economy, and then “we can say goodbye” to all our plans, including the minimum wage increase, home ownership, the income tax exemption of mothers of two and the doubling of the family tax benefit, he said.
During the next term, the government will want to achieve an average salary of one million forints, a minimum wage of HUF 400,000, the payment in full of the fourteenth monthly pension, a new agricultural regime, full energy independence and the integration of the opportunities offered by artificial intelligence into Hungarian life. The overarching plan is for the Hungarians to be great, to be rich and to be as strong as possible, he listed.
Mr Orbán said he did not enter politics in order to become prime minister, “it just so happened.” “I’m not saying that I’m entirely innocent, I would say so in vain, people would hardly believe me, but I entered politics because I wanted to accomplish great things and to take part in great things. In which line – first, second or third – that’s secondary,” the Prime Minister said in answer to a question from a member of the audience of the rally held in the Miskolc sports hall about whether Fidesz could have overarching plans in the shadow of the war.
The Prime Minister stressed that they had formed opposition student circles in the mid-eighties because they had wanted to accomplish great things. “Comecon over, Warsaw Pact out, Soviets out, communists out, old Hungarian spirit back, patriotism up high, our priests should have the space and opportunity to evangelise because we could do with it – these were the overarching plans back then,” he said.
He added that their plan was to change the historical mistake that after losing World War I, Hungary’s fate and course had been designated by its enemies. They drew the borders and adjusted international politics to ensure that the Hungarians remain small and poor for eternity. “I’m in politics in order for us to change this. And the Hungarians should be great, should be rich and should be as strong as possible. That’s the big plan,” he laid down.
At the same time, the Prime Minister warned that a pre-condition of all overarching future plans and goals was to stay out the war. “We must not give our money to the Ukrainians,” we must preserve full employment and the family-based society.
In Mr Orbán’s view, it is a daily threat that Hungary is forced, dragged into a war. He warned that this was not just a theoretical possibility that was far off, but something that “is knocking at our door” every day and he “must keep this door shut tooth and nail.”
“Preserving the family-based society, the workfare economy, not giving our money to the Ukrainians and not going to war. If we have all that, then we can talk about overarching plans,” he pointed out.
Regarding specific plans, he said during the next term they would like the average salary to increase from the present HUF 700,000 to HUF 1 million, and to increase the minimum wage of HUF 310,000-320,000 to HUF 400,000. He added that they additionally wanted to complete the plan relating to the fourteenth monthly pension, the first weekly instalment of which would be paid to pensioners shortly.
He stressed that pensioners were an active part of society. They are not kept people, they are not a burden, their pensions are not a charity; they worked for the country throughout a lifetime, and their pensions are the consequence of their hard work.
He also said that they want to build a new agricultural regime. He explained that the EU set an 80 per cent upper limit for Member States for the subsidisation of their own farmers. Earlier, Hungary was not even able to reach this upper limit because other developments had to be prioritised. However, two years ago, the government launched a new agricultural policy and they are providing the maximum permitted grants for farmers and the food industry, Mr Orbán added, taking the view that within 2 to 3 years “this will yield fantastic results.” Our premise is that we must live off that which we are good at. “We’re definitely good at this,” he observed.
Among the goals to be achieved, the Prime Minister mentioned Hungary’s full energy independence which they would seek to attain through the development of nuclear and solar energy.
He recalled that after World Wars I and II, Hungary had been stripped of everything that could serve as energy. This country only has much as it has inherited from its ancestors and what it could contribute to it from hard physical labour and intellectual work, muscle and brain. This is a country built from work and operating from work, he stressed.
He said they will extend the operational lifetime of Paks I and will build Paks II, though he admitted that they were making slower progress with the latter than would be desirable. He indicated that the two together would supply more than 60 to 65 per cent of the country’s power needs, while the rest would be supplied from solar energy. Regarding this, he said it is key whether in the coming years Hungary will be able to implement enormous solar energy storage projects separately for industrial parks and members of the public.
As for oil and gas, he said “if you don’t have any, you should buy some.” He indicated that Hungarian businesses had gas fields in Azerbaijan, and there was a country where they also had oil fields. We make sure that Hungary should be a safe country, a secure country also in this sense, he stressed.
Regarding artificial intelligence, he said László Palkovics was tasked with working out the plans, in a separate task force, with which “we can integrate, for our benefit, the new developments of artificial intelligence that are facing us into Hungarian life.”
He observed that they had faith in and were afraid of artificial intelligence all at once. He said he can see the opportunity, but cannot foresee all the consequences in advance, including which jobs will be phased out because of it and if they allow it to enter education, they should do so by making sure that children will be smarter, not more dull-witted for it. „Because we fundamentally need not artificial intelligence, but natural intelligence; at the end of the day, it’s more important than artificial,” he pointed out.
“There is a love story here,” Mr Orbán said, describing Fidesz’s relationship with Miskolc at the anti-war rally of the Digital Civic Circles at the Borsod County seat, stressing that he has always been able to rely on the people of Miskolc. He added that you could recognise a love story based on the fact that it was long. He himself first held a forum for members of the public in Miskolc for the first time 37 years ago when Hungary was still under communist rule.
Communists out, Soviet troops back home, let there finally be an independent and free Hungary, “this is why I came here, to Miskolc, to campaign for this,” he recalled.
Mr Orbán highlighted that since then they had won many times together. There was a period when the City of Miskolc provided one of the Vice Presidents of Fidesz. He then listed former mayors, church leaders and cultural actors of Miskolc. “This is a love story between Fidesz and your city. I have always been able to count on you, you have never once betrayed me, you have never once let me down, you have never hurt me,” he stated in summary, adding that to the best of his knowledge, Fidesz, too, has always stood with Miskolc. “You have always been able to count on us, count on me in person, too, and you will be able to count on us in the future as well. This love story is not over yet,” he said.
Regarding the Tisza Party and DK, the Prime Minister, who answered questions from members of the audience after his introduction, said they belong to the biggest European war agitating parties in Brussels. He said they want to take young people to Ukraine as soldiers; leaders of large European states signed an agreement to the effect that they will send and station soldiers in Ukraine. They say as peacekeepers, he said, observing that he is afraid that they will be “warkeepers,” rather than peacekeepers.
The Prime Minister also spoke about the fact that in order for young people to have a chance in Miskolc, they also had to ensure that their money was not sent to Ukraine. That money is needed here, the money that they are sending there is missing from the entire European economy. The fruit of the Hungarian people’s hard work must be put to use in Hungary, he laid down. We will send neither soldiers, nor money, and then Miskolc will be able to grow, Mr Orbán stated.
In answer to the question – with reference to the fact that the population of Miskolc keeps diminishing and many young people are leaving the city – of why young people should stay or come back, the Prime Minister said parents are responsible for every child in first place, they will become the kind of adults their parents raise them to be. This is also true in a political sense, he pointed out, highlighting that young people like to turn against their parents which can also cause political problems. Talking about politics is also part of a young person’s education, and he asked parents to talk to their children about it, to make them understand how important their decision will be.
He also spoke about the role of sport in education, pointing out that the most the government can contribute to the education of children is the education of children through sport. Those who support sport also support the education of young people.
Regarding Miskolc, the Prime Minister said it was one of the losers of the change of regime after the fall of communism, a socialist industrial city, but today it is a proud, modern industrial hub where the world’s most prestigious technologies are operated.
He said they have halved unemployment, since 2010, 43,000 new jobs have come into being, and over a period of ten years, wages have tripled. In 2010, the poverty rate stood at 30 per cent, while today it is 18 per cent, and the government also assumed the city’s debt of HUF 36 billion which was accumulated by the previous city leadership.
The pace is good, the direction is good, but there is as yet a very great amount of work to do. He said the city is in the process of undergoing major development and is on the verge of major development.
In the Prime Minister’s view, security, too, is better than it was, there are good schools and vocational training is good. He highlighted that Miskolc provided good skilled workers for Hungary. There will be safe jobs, and if a young person wants to study, there is a university here, a whole university town, he added, underlining that young people have several reasons for staying in the city.
Young people who feel that their wings have grown strong enough and now want to fly should be allowed to fly, making sure at the same time that they have somewhere to return to. There should be a parental home, parents, an opportunity for young people to live their own lives. A pre-condition of all this is, above all, that young people should not be conscripted and taken to Ukraine to fight, he laid down.
The Prime Minister was also asked about when they could expect a major automotive industry or other high-tech project in Miskolc. In response, listing the five largest local investments, Mr Orbán mentioned the Chinese Halms, stressed that Bosch had recently opened two new sites, while they also have the Korean LG Magna and the Chinese Chervon facilities. Additionally, they have the university and a high-tech zone that is expected to develop around it.
The people of Miskolc must decide whether they want multiple medium-sized international production facilities employing 1,000 to 5,000 people or they want a single major investment. Each one has its advantages and disadvantages as well as its risks, he pointed out.
Continuing this line of thought, the Prime Minister said Miskolc must be cautious with the automotive industry, stressing that in the past year, some one hundred thousand automotive industry workers have been laid off in Western Europe. If the people of Miskolc think in terms of a single large factory, they should only consider electric because while the transition will be slower than anyone expected, it will happen, he highlighted.
If they have such a decision, “we are happy to be at your disposal and we are happy to bring the next major investment to Miskolc,” Mr Orbán said.
He observed that there was a brownfield area within the city, and he also recommended to the mayor that “we will pay for it if you want it,” and then the city could buy it back. As to whether they will want to build there a factory again or a new city centre, that is for Miskolc to decide, he stated.
In answer to the question of a lady who introduced herself as “a satisfied teacher,” Mr Orbán said there are major intellectual and professional challenges and there are political problems in public education all at once. The intellectual and professional challenges can be summed up in what children should be taught in a fast-changing technological era, to what extent new technology is a blessing and to what extent it is a curse, he said. These are difficult questions which teachers, rather than the politicians of the government should find answers to, he pointed out.
He stressed that they needed ongoing communication between education management and teachers. The people in education management know what they want, while teachers can see what can be done, he explained. This is how the criteria of the freedom of teachers and the education of the nation can be reconciled, but this requires cooperation between teachers and the country’s political leaders, Mr Orbán said.
He observed that this cooperation had “been creaking” recently, there had also been demonstrations. In continuation, he said he does not believe that this was just a question of money, and while without doubt, teachers were previously underpaid, by the end of the year the average salary of teachers will increase to above HUF 900,000. However, pay rises have been implemented in vain, this cooperation between teachers and education management has to this day failed to materialise or is unsatisfactory, he stated.
Answering a question, the Prime Minister mentioned the United States, China and the Turkic world as friends of Hungary, stressing that the latter includes not only Turkey, but also Central Asia. Mr Orbán said “I don’t want to use the word ‘friend’ because it would seem like provocation, but we have a fair and balanced relationship with the Russians, and this must be appreciated, it will be of great value in the future.”
The Prime Minister said the low level of German-Hungarian relations is a loss because these relations had always occupied a privileged position in the past. He added: he is not saying that the Germans are the world’s best liked nation, but we Hungarians “get on with them quite well.” The Germans living in Hungary are good patriots, they have always been on the patriotic side, and “I also have a secret survey” which reveals that the majority of them would vote for AfD if they lived in Germany, he stated.
He pointed out that in the meantime, cooperation with Italy was positively deep-rooted and amicable. Mentioning other countries, he said within the EU we have the Czechs on our side, and “while at this point in time, a conflict is making life more difficult,” we also have the Slovaks with us.
“We must sort this Benes thing out” because it is evident that no Hungarian government can accept collective guilt. He stressed that “cooperation with the parts of the Hungarian nation living in the detached territories or in the territory of historical Hungary or in Slovakia or in any part of the Carpathian Basin, in Central Europe, everyone is free to call them what they like, is a non-negotiable part” of the policy of the incumbent government. It is our duty to protect them, no one can have any objection to that, Slovak-Hungarian friendship must be able to endure this, he pointed out.
In order for the Hungarians living there not to sustain any financial disadvantage, the government set up a consortium with law offices, he stated. They did so in order for Hungarian law firms to be able to represent, at the expense of the Hungarian state, the interests of Hungarians, against whom the Benes Decrees are sought to be used, he added in explanation.
In conjunction with this, the Prime Minister observed that talks must be conducted with the Mayor of Miskolc about the future of the Miskolc-Kassa (Kosice) axis. It would be well worth developing more intensive cooperation between the two cities, adjusted to the actual circumstances, but this, too, is an affair for the people of Miskolc, he stated.
At the end of his list, Mr Orbán described relations with Serbia as a special friendship. Serbian-Hungarian relations are stormy historically, but there is no Hungarian rise, there is no successful and safe Hungarian nation strategy without cooperation with the Serbs, he pointed out.
In answer to another question from a member of the audience, Mr Orbán described cooperation with the Roma of Hungary as one of the most important questions of Hungarian future. Regarding his plans concerning the Roma community, he recalled that helping those at the bottom of society up into the middle classes was always the most difficult task because there, there were not only financial differences. He pointed out that in 2010 he had concluded an agreement with the Roma community that was in effect to this day and that had two main elements: ‘you will get a job, but you must go to work’ and ‘we’ll help you with raising your children, but your children must go to school.’
This is a process of bourgeoisification, of entering the middle classes, he added. There are ever more teachers of Roma origin, and a large percentage of Roma children advance to obtaining vocational qualifications; this is the future.
The channels of higher education, too, are open, they have doubled the number of students of Roma origin, but as the point of reference was low, there is yet much to do, he indicated.
The vast majority of Roma people have managed to join the workfare economy built since 2010, the Roma community began to connect with Hungarian life, he said. “Other than us, no one regarded this as a priority in the past 35 years. Others only spoke about it, while we have done a great deal to this end,” he stressed.
Listing the results of the fight against poverty, Mr Orbán said financial savings have increased, today there are more than a million more vehicles on the roads compared with 2010, while meat consumption per capita has increased from 53 kilos a year to 69 kilos.
He admitted at the same time that there were still problems they had to work on. “The first one is that without order there is no future. And if they want a future for themselves, they, too, must observe the laws, and there is no compromise here,” he said, addressing members of the Roma community.
Mr Orbán also spoke about the housing situation, warning that in Hungary today, there are 80,000 housing properties without running water which are only suitable for human inhabitation with major reservations. He indicated that they would deal with this problem, but here “with a strange logic,” they had set up a different order. He said if they help with the housing of those in the lowest strata of society while the middle classes themselves have no proper access to housing, by doing so they will turn the middle classes and the Roma against each other. Therefore, they must first open up the opportunity for members of the middle classes to own their housing properties; hence the fixed 3 per cent housing loan.
He said in the coming four years, they will have to deal with the issue of the housing of the Roma emphatically, whilst maintaining the agreement that there will be jobs, but they have to work and there will be help in the education of children, but children must attend school. “If we manage all that, then we will go a long way in the next four years,” he stated in summary.
In answer to the question of whether the recently introduced governmental measures are being implemented from credit, the Prime Minister said for a very long time, Hungary has been unable to fulfil all its needs from the money that it generates a year, and so there is a deficit of the budget. The main reason being that upon the fall of communism, Hungary inherited a very large debt, he observed, adding that he aims for a balance in the budget, not including the interest on the debt service.
He recalled that the sovereign debt stood at around 73 to 74 per cent of GDP, and interest on that debt had to be paid. He warned: those who say that Hungary is in a difficult situation are right, but this has been so ever since Trianon. He stressed that the measures now introduced could be accommodated within the income the Hungarian people would generate; we are able to pay for them without increasing the Hungarian sovereign debt.
In his view, those who want to spoil the recent measures – housing, minimum wage increase, tax benefit available in relation to children – by saying that they are from credit are “swindlers.” “We, and also I as prime minister in person, are able to make Hungary grow without consuming its own future, without doing all this from credit,” he stated in summary.
He said in Western Europe there are veritable war preparations. He added that the war was very close and was knocking at our door, mostly because it was physically taking place in a neighbouring country, rather than somewhere far away.
He also said the Europeans have so far given Ukraine EUR 193 billion, they are now giving them another EUR 90 billion for two years, and the Ukrainians submitted a demand for yet another EUR 800 billion for the maintenance of the country in the next ten years which does not even include security and military expenditures, that will be another item. According to European leaders, “this will not bankrupt them” if they win on the front and Russia is obliged to pay reparations.
Mr Orbán warned: no one should bet a large sum on a nuclear power paying Western European countries or Ukraine reparations. The whole thing is nothing but a fairy tale, we are becoming ever more involved and with every day we are spending more and more money, he pointed out, adding that in the end, there will be truly nothing else left than they will have to try to defeat the Russians because otherwise there will be a collapse. So far, the defence industry pushed us into the war, now also bankers and politicians, he said.
Mr Orbán also spoke about the fact that today European leaders were giving money in order for 800,000 people to die or to become maimed over a period of two years. If there is a morally correct position that responsibly represents the Hungarian national interests, it is the position of peace, that we must not become involved in the war, he laid down.
We know for a fact that only those can stay out of the war who try to stay out, he pointed out. Mr Orbán said they want to stay out, however, the Tisza Party and DK do not. If the incumbent government parties win the elections, peace will remain; if the opposition wins the elections, we will be heading for war, he stated. They belong to the European war agitating party alliance, they are the Hungarian lieutenants of the European pro-war forces, Manfred Weber, the European chief of the Tisza Party is the number one war agitator in Europe, he pointed out.
If a pro-Brussels government is formed here, then they will push us into the war and the economic policy which finances the war. That is a war economy, and then “we can say goodbye” to all our plans, including the minimum wage increase, home ownership, the income tax exemption of mothers of two and the doubling of the family tax benefit, he said.
There were two world wars, and we were not able to stay out of either. Neither István Tisza, nor Miklós Horthy succeeded. The big question is whether we can succeed, and I think we can, he argued, adding that they are building international relations so that Hungary can stay out of the war.
He pointed out that renewal and boldness were good things, but “everything has its own ordained time.”
He said while he is “an old chap,” he will need all his knowledge, experience and skills in order to have a chance to keep the country out of the war. “This job cannot be left to young adventurers now, we must go for the safe choice; this is why I’m saying that Fidesz is the safe choice,” he said, concluding his speech at the rally.
