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Roger Köppel: Your Eminences, Honourable Ambassadors, Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Politicians and Former Politicians, Officials, Dear Guests, Esteemed Media Representatives from many countries,
On behalf of Weltwoche, I welcome you here in Vienna. It’s a pleasure to have you here, and it’s a great pleasure for me to be your guest here as a neutral Swiss in neutral Austria. Thank you very much! And of course on this late afternoon I’m particularly pleased to have this opportunity to talk to two prominent statesmen. We’ll be here for about ninety minutes talking about peace in Europe with two politicians who, of course, are setting and have set priorities and who are much talked about. One is a distinguished social democrat with an impressive career who, as a brilliant reformist politician, has had the courage to put the interests of his country above his career, his office and his party, and who – together with Jacques Chirac, his French counterpart in office in a time of war – had the courage to speak his mind to his friends in Washington. He is the Federal Chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schröder. On the other side is Hungary’s prime minister for many years, the longest serving prime minister in the European Union and currently the President of the Council of the EU – from the very first a freedom fighter on the barricades against Soviet tanks in Budapest during the Cold War, and today a fighter for diplomacy and peace in the world. He is Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Welcome! And of course the wives, colleagues from Hungary, and the whole delegation. It’s great to have you here as our friends.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
My first question, Mr. Schröder, very briefly: What links you to Vienna?
Gerhard Schröder: First of all, it’s one of the really beautiful European capitals. Secondly, it’s a very good place to live. And thirdly, I have many friends here – not only politicians, they’re the fewest.
Roger Köppel: And, Prime Minister, do you also have such a relaxed, friendly, collegial relationship with Vienna, the former capital of the Austro–Hungarian Empire?
The Hungarians are linked to Vienna by the Kaiser.
And if I may ask, what in fact do you think of your interlocutor here on stage today, Gerhard Schröder? What do you think of him?
I’m going to say some old-fashioned things. I don’t know if the word “respect” is still in fashion here. We were colleagues – if an elephant and a mouse can be said to be colleagues. But we served together for a few years. And I’m sad to see that respect – respect for former leaders – has disappeared from the world. It used to be different: former chancellors were highly respected. I see that this isn’t the case everywhere: in Hungary, if you say someone was the former Chancellor of Germany, everyone stands up and expresses their respect. So I’m bound to the Chancellor by respect – and not only respect for him as my senior, but also in a professional sense. There are two things he’s done that nobody else has done, and for which I have a lot of respect for him – and maybe we can talk about that later.
Roger Köppel: And Mr. Schröder, how is it for you? What do you think of Viktor Orbán? You’ve known each other for a long time. We showed you this picture from 1998. In fact, neither of you has changed since then. What do you think of him?
Gerhard Schröder: Well, actually we’ve always been on good terms. I think it was in 1998 or 1999 – relatively early on – that we got to know each other, and it was a frequent pleasure for me to be a guest in Budapest. I have particularly fond memories of goulash soup, which was always there, and which was always generously served. And I apologise, but there was always a pint of beer with it… And yes, politically we were in different parties, but there was Europe, which was important to us. But at the same time it was also important to have and maintain – as far as politically possible – a reasonable relationship with Russia, our big neighbour.
One of my failures is linked to the Chancellor. I remember that at a private dinner – perhaps in 1999 – I tried to persuade him that when the European Union would be enlarged, applicants shouldn’t be admitted together in groups, but that whoever was most ready should be admitted immediately. In that sense we Hungarians were at the front, of course. And the Chancellor refused. He said to me, “Look at the map: it’s impossible for Poland not to be in the first phase of enlargement, so enlargement will take place in groups.” I had fantastic counter arguments, but none of them worked…
Roger Köppel: Maybe just one more personal question as a warm-up, before we get into the serious and shocking topics. You’re both politicians who are partly subject to serious criticism, and often hostility. And many in the audience might well ask how one actually relates to this. Everywhere a red carpet is rolled out in front of the Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic; and then suddenly he’s attacked, and people don’t want to know him. What’s your attitude to that? How do you deal with it, Mr. Schröder? What’s provided you with the strength not to give up?
Gerhard Schröder: Well, first of all, if you’re in a job like this, a vocation like this, you have to have a thick skin. Even if you think it’s unfair, you have to be able to deal with criticism, as I’ve often done; and you have to have a healthy level of self-confidence. I can rely on that, at least sometimes. There’s one exception in which my self-confidence doesn’t help; and that’s when I contradict my wife. But I don’t think I’m the only man who feels like that. And that’s why the second thing is that you need to be able to be where you can withstand that level of criticism, that level of attack, and I have that.
Roger Köppel: And you, Mr. Orbán? Because you’re someone who’s always the target of criticism, and now, with this peace initiative, with these attempts to negotiate, you’ve been the target of a so-called “shitstorm” from Brussels. How can you shield yourself against this?
I’m of the opinion that it’s important to be loved, but I’m also of the opinion that you’ll get that love at home. I have a wife, five children and six grandchildren; I have people who love me. Somehow we’ll survive the political debates. The other thing is that I was born facing political headwinds, so I’m an anti-communist who comes from the anti-communist resistance of the late 1980s. And I’m used to the fact that the majority power is always against me: the communist media, the Communist Party, and then later, after the elections, when the communists became liberals, always the liberals. Those in power were always against me. And this is how it is in Brussels. So there was almost never a moment in my life when the wind was blowing from behind. I’m used to it. And the Hungarians have a saying, which is a little bombastic, but it helps one survive. It’s this: “The Hungarians aren’t right, but they will be right.”
Roger Köppel: Prime Minister, Mr. Orbán, let’s get down to business. What I see in this room, what I see in much of Europe, and what the opinion polls confirm, is that there’s a great desire for an end to the death, the killing, the suffering in Ukraine. People want this war to end. How do you see the situation today? What are the chances that this war will end in the foreseeable future? How likely is the prospect of peace, or at least a ceasefire? Where are we at the moment?
I follow what Chancellor Schröder often says on this subject. There are two reasons for my special respect for the Chancellor, one of which is connected with this. Today, Emmanuel Macron is making waves by talking about Europe’s strategic autonomy, but Gerhard Schröder did that twenty years ago. Europe had strategic autonomy when he was German Chancellor. Therefore I always follow what the Chancellor says on geopolitical matters, including on the war, and I generally share his opinion. This is why I accepted the invitation to discuss this subject. I’m not an optimist. We can’t place any faith in Europe: Europe cannot make peace. Today Europe can make war, but not peace. So the only hope we have is that, on the other side of the “great water”, in five days’ time there will be a decision that can bring, if not peace, then at least a ceasefire.
Roger Köppel: How do you see it, Mr. Schröder? You have contacts with the Russian president, you know the situation. Is it actually likely at the moment that negotiations can take place? In principle, would Putin be prepared any longer to negotiate – or, let’s say, militarily, simply advance as far as possible? What’s your opinion?
Gerhard Schröder: Ultimately I can’t judge that, and I don’t think anybody can, but I think it’s demonstrable that he has no desire to just be a military commander, and he’s thinking about how to end this war. It’s interesting that I was part of an experiment, an initiative from the Ukrainian side, from President Zelenskyy. It was right after the war started – which, as you know, was in February 2022. I received a request through friends in Switzerland – I have several there – asking if I could talk to Mr. Putin about this. At first I ran some checks in case this was a wise guy playing a joke. I was told that he thought of himself as being more important than he actually was, but it turned out that they were serious. And I received Mr. Zelenskyy’s colleague, and we talked about what could be the content of such a discussion aimed at ending the war, what topics should be discussed. Well, first of all, there’s the Donbas. As I see it, and perhaps Viktor Orbán will agree with me, this is first and foremost about cultural issues – especially language; and it may have been a mistake for the Ukrainian parliament not to accept bilingualism in the Donbas. This naturally leads to rejection in parts of the country where Russian is the primary language. The second thing was NATO membership. This is something that needs to be discussed, because it’s a fundamental interest for the other side. And thirdly, of course, if membership of NATO is renounced, then the question of Ukraine’s security arises, and the question of security guarantees. The proposal was that perhaps the Security Council plus Germany could be the way forward, and they could provide security guarantees under certain circumstances. Of course a particularly difficult issue is Crimea. What can be done there? According to the discussions at the time, my understanding was that a solution could only be found in the long term, and that at the moment there’s no quick solution. And then the Donbas. Actually I think that bilingualism would have been appropriate for human reasons; because what pensioner who speaks Russian but barely speaks Ukrainian – which is another language – would want to submit a pension application in a language he or she barely understands? So perhaps this could have been a first step, in which a willingness to compromise could have been shown.
Roger Köppel: Could I say something here?
Gerhard Schröder: Yes.
Roger Köppel: It’s interesting that on the basis of those discussions, draft agreements were drawn up, agreements were prepared; and interestingly you were really close to this. How near was this to completion? And I believe that Ukraine was then ready for neutral status. Mr. Zelenskyy mentioned that at the time. How close were we to that in April 2022?
Gerhard Schröder: My impression was not close enough. I talked to President Putin about it. He found it worth mentioning and interesting, and asked me to talk about it to senior staff, who were supposed to take it further. That didn’t happen, because the question was whether the other side wanted to believe in it. And for me this was a question that remained open: I couldn’t answer it, and probably nobody could. Then there was an attempt to get someone in office to work on it in the same way, because it’s always more difficult for politicians who are no longer in office to be heard as much as they need to be. And then the idea was raised that perhaps a leader in office with access to both sides – namely President Erdoğan of Turkey – could take over the discussions going forward. I don’t know to what extent this happened. In any case, it was an opportunity that didn’t materialise. I don’t want to speculate on whether other powers that have an interest in this conflict were materially involved, for whatever reason. That’s possible, but in any case agreement didn’t materialise, and my understanding is that the question of how to deal with these issues is still something that could be resolved. As I see it, this is a European problem. I have to completely clearly say that I thought it was great that Viktor Orbán tried to work in the same way. But as much as I respect Hungary and Viktor Orbán, I think that some thought should have been given to how – together with the Germans and the French, who are important supporters of Ukraine – the aim should have been not just to provide support through armaments, but to combine this with an attempt on one side and the other to launch peace initiatives through diplomatic channels. At least that’s what I would have wanted. That didn’t happen. President Erdoğan tried to do something, but ultimately he didn’t succeed – unfortunately, because an unbelievable number of people have died because of this. I think that this is a task for European politics in particular. I’d trust people like Viktor Orbán – and others in Germany and France should also think about the fact that this war’s taking place in Europe, the Americans are further away from it, and that achieving success here is primarily a European task.
Roger Köppel: Mr. Orbán, let’s continue with you. Before the summer break you launched a peace initiative. You went to see President Zelenskyy and President Putin, you spoke to President Erdoğan, you went to Beijing, you went to Mar-a-Lago – the unofficial capital of the United States – and you were able to form a picture. As we’ve heard, in April 2022 there was a proposal on the table: a neutral Ukraine, not a NATO member, perhaps an open position for Crimea. What’s your impression now? Is Putin still ready to agree to this? Are there still concrete ideas like this, and what’s your impression after all these discussions?
First I’d like to comment on the account given by the Chancellor. If I’ve correctly understood what you’ve said, it was around April 2022 when an attempt was made in Istanbul – or at least somewhere in Turkey – to conclude an agreement between the Russians and the Ukrainians. I’ve seen the documents related to that. So I’ve seen the written record of what the Chancellor’s saying. There was a proposal on the table that could have been the basis for a ceasefire and peace talks. Here the Chancellor is obviously politely not mentioning a key player in this story: the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who according to legend…
Roger Köppel: Boris Johnson…
…who, according to legend, intervened in the process and made the agreement impossible. Whether that was exactly the case is for historians to write, but let the record show that in April 2022, thanks in part to Chancellor Schröder, we were close to at least a ceasefire being achieved. That’s his account. My account is July 2024. That was when we took over the EU Presidency. I thought a lot about what to do with this EU Presidency. It can be handled in a bureaucratic way: you have 52 legislative dossiers open, from the most laughable to the most serious, and you have to have hundreds of meetings. And if you do it well, the bureaucrats in Brussels pat you on the back and say: “What a fine Presidency!” The most important thing is that nothing happens. I thought about that. We had a Presidency like that in 2011, I was Prime Minister then, and we did that. But now there’s this war. And I considered what one’s duty is at a time like this. I thought that we belong to the Christian democratic world, that this wasn’t an accident, and that it had to mean something. I thought that people are killing each other on the front line, hundreds of people are dying every day. Every day there are hundreds of orphans, widows, terrible injuries! Appalling! On TV you don’t see how terrible it is. This is a very brutal war. These Slavs are pretty rough, you know: good soldiers, and very rough. So there are huge human losses. And I thought that since I belong to the Christian democrat world, let’s try: we’ve got a tool in our hands, we hold the rotating Presidency of the EU Council, what could be more important than trying to do something for peace? And then I asked the opinion of some of the more experienced European politicians, whom I don’t want to subject to persecution by the media, so I won’t mention their names, and they said, “Try it! Go ahead, try it!” And then I drew up a plan to go to Kyiv/Kiev, and then to go to Moscow and try to get a ceasefire. I’m not talking about peace talks, because I think peace talks are difficult. Peace talks require peace plans that are somewhat realistic, but that’s difficult, complicated and long. My objective wasn’t to get a peace agreement, but to get a ceasefire, so that they weren’t killing one another. And I thought I could get them to agree to a ceasefire if I could convince them that time was working against them, and therefore it would be better for everyone if we had an immediate ceasefire, during which we could discuss how to arrange peace talks. But I would have had to convince them that time was against them. And I said this to Zelenskyy. This is in July: July 2024. “Believe me”, I said, “it will be much worse in September.” But he said no, it would be better and they’d win. Then I warned him about the numbers, facts and figures. “Never mind that, we’ll win.” I went to the Russian president, who said, “But we’re winning. Can I get a guarantee that if there’s a ceasefire, the other side won’t use it to reinforce its lines?” And I couldn’t give him a guarantee on that, so I failed there too. And then I thought, “Well, we have two warring sides and a huge number of casualties, how can we get them to make peace?” And so I went to China. And then I went to Washington, I spoke to Erdoğan, and finally I went to President Trump in Mar-a-Lago; because I thought that we need to bring together an international consensus which puts pressure on both sides, and unites the major countries in the international community in demanding a brief ceasefire. This can only be achieved from the outside. I wrote a report on this for the bureaucrats in Brussels and for all the European prime ministers, saying that this is what should be done. The Chinese were in, the Turks were in. Washington was busy with other things, and there was another presidential candidate then, not the current one. President Trump was in the middle of the campaign. He said that he’s a man of peace, if he wins we can count on him, but he wouldn’t be able to do anything before the election. The Europeans rejected the proposal to set up a peace camp with the Chinese and the Turks to put pressure on the warring sides, and they said “no”. And so we stayed with the Chinese, and with them we set up a group at the UN this September called “Friends of Peace”. This was officially initiated by China – you know: elephant, little mouse. We’re working on it. This is my account. And it’s a very sad story that the Europeans, who ought to be most interested in a ceasefire and peace, haven’t understood that they don’t need to be on the side of war. They haven’t understood that their job isn’t to win the war in Ukraine, because first of all that’s impossible, and secondly it will cost a lot of lives, but as Europeans their job is to be on the side of peace. And I haven’t been able to convince any big country in the European Union on this. This is why I say that I place no hope in the Europeans. I’ve seen them up close. I don’t want to say anything bad about them, but I don’t know – is there a word in German for “frenzied”? They’re frenzied. They want to win in war. They want to defeat Russia. That’s what they have in mind. That’s what they’re talking about. “Now we’re going to defeat Russia.” And the key role in this is played by the President of the European Commission, who carries the ideology, the narrative, leads the way and carries the flag. The President of the European Commission is the one who goes to the front and says that the Russians must be defeated in war, and that to make that happen everything must be given to Ukraine. And anything that relates to peace she pushes aside as treason, as anti-democratic, as indecent. This is the situation in Europe today. This is all I can say.
Roger Köppel: The most important counter-argument that’s being used against you, Prime Minister Orbán – and it’s an argument that’s also being used by the European Union, by Ursula von der Leyen and by Chancellor Scholz – is that Putin is an imperialist dictator who with Ukraine is taking the first step towards further occupations, further conquests. “We must stop Putin now, because if we don’t stop him, his military aggression, his war of aggression, will be rewarded. That’s a terrible weakness on the part of the Western world, and if we allow it, in fact it’s an invitation for all potential aggressors to attack the West.” And they say that this policy of “appeasement”, which is presented as a peace mission, is actually a policy of weakening the position of the West. What do you say to these critics who say this to you?
First of all, the situation is getting worse. This war is lost. This war has been lost by the Europeans, by Ukraine. This is the military reality. I don’t know what’s written in the German and Austrian press, but I haven’t seen a sane military analyst who doesn’t say that this war can’t be won by Ukraine on the front line. There’s agreement on that. Only politicians say that this war can be won. Militarily this war is lost. Of course, if the West decides to send troops to the front line, and on the front line the Russo–Ukrainian war turns into a NATO–Russian or European–Russian war on the front line, that’s a new situation. But then you should be prepared in Vienna, because there will be conscription. But if we don’t want that, if we’re not willing to send soldiers to the front line, then this war is lost. The question is when we’ll agree, because every day the scale of defeat is increasing. The Russians are moving forward, the Ukrainians are dying in increasing numbers, Ukraine is increasingly in ruins and cannot provide the conditions for life, and the situation is getting worse every day. Therefore I don’t want to moralise, and I don’t want to talk about what lasting peace might look like, or whether Putin is an imperialist. At the moment these are irrelevant circumstances. We’ve just lost a war in which the situation is getting worse every day. It’s at times like this that sane people say, “Stop, call a ceasefire.” Not yet peace, but a ceasefire: stop people dying on the front line and start negotiating. It’s very rare to have a war in which there’s no communication between the opposing sides. Diplomatically, what we’re doing is barbaric. Whatever kind of war there’s been, there’s always been communication. It’s barbarism for Europe to be proud that it doesn’t communicate with the Russians. It’s stupidity, diplomatic illiteracy and, in human terms, barbarism. What does it say if we don’t communicate? It’s like the message to the Germans in World War II: we’ll continue until we’ve exterminated you, until we’ve taken everything unconditionally. Is that the message we want to send to Moscow? Obviously we don’t want to take Moscow! Or do we?
Roger Köppel: Mr. Schröder, this must also be recorded for the media representatives here in the room. In our conversation in Zurich, you utterly condemned this war, you said that it was a huge mistake by Vladimir Putin to play this military card, and you condemned it in no uncertain terms. But you also said something that shocked me a little – I won’t say whether positively or negatively. You also said that, in this peace process, the European Union can in fact be overlooked: it’s no longer a factor. Where are Germany and France? Where are these countries when a European position needs to be taken? So I ask you, where is Europe in this situation? Have you also heard Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s comments on what’s happening to Europe?
Gerhard Schröder: I can’t tell you that either, because for too long I’ve not been involved in active and informal processes. Viktor Orbán’s position is much closer to all that. But what you’ve just said corresponds not only to the way official politics perceives things, but also to the way people perceive them. This is precisely why I believe that the central issue is that this is a war in Europe – at least in parts of Europe, to a greater extent than elsewhere. And since this is the case, it ought to be incumbent on the major European powers in particular to follow Viktor Orbán, so to speak. Of course he can do a lot of things, because he enjoys trust – as I understand it, in Russia, for example. But what he needs in order to really grasp such a process well and carry it through in a positive way is support – particularly from France and Germany. This is a very important issue. Of course, we’d welcome Spain and Italy, there’s no question about that; but until such an initiative – which can only be welcomed – has the joint support of Germany and France, it will be difficult to see it through in Europe. And this is why it’s important that the initiative for which he’s being attacked should be supported. And it’s interesting – since when has someone been attacked for a peace mission? In fact, where are we? Such an initiative could go awry. But I think that if it fails, because the other side may not be there – or may not yet be there – to be a partner in this, then that doesn’t render it pointless; but it must be the task for a European policy with a democratic structure and a humanity-oriented purpose. Who, if not the European Union, should be responsible for ending a war in Europe, a war between European powers? The Americans certainly have an interest in this, because they have an interest in everything that’s happening – or not happening – in the world. That is fine. But the central question must be whether this common Europe is capable of ending a war in Europe with the help of the Americans. Or what’s also not irrelevant is that, for example, Brazil is involved, the BRICS countries are involved. They’re all welcome partners in such a process, but it’s primarily Europe that’s involved. And Europe is the European Union. And someone from the European Union, from the very heart of the European Union, which is in charge here, must not be cast adrift. In fact, that’s the real support that I see. Those who run the EU in Brussels cannot be persuaded to do so, and they don’t have the background to actively support a process like the one he’s started. And that’s what should happen; because how many more people will die before diplomacy finally makes a comeback? Right now this is the key question that responsible politics in Europe must ask itself.
Roger Köppel: Maybe a short supplementary question, a short one, and I’ll give a short answer. This is always thrown back at you, but it could be an advantage. You have a really close, long-standing relationship with President Putin. Of all the people in this room, you’re probably the one who’s known him best for many, many years now, for decades. I’d therefore like you to be the judge on this. Everyone says that he’s the new imperialist, the conqueror with phantom pains, who wants to get the old Soviet Union back. Have you spoken to him, have you asked him, “Vladimir, do you want to get the old Soviet Union back? What’s up?” Did you talk about this over a glass of wine in one of his palaces or bunkers? What does Putin want? What’s your explanation? Does he want to conquer and we have to stop him gobbling up more states? What’s going on inside the man? The only person who can really answer this is you, Mr. Schröder.
Gerhard Schröder: Excuse me, but I’m not a psychologist. Psychology and the exploration of people’s souls shouldn’t be confused with this kind of active politics, because even if he were as he’s portrayed, he couldn’t be swayed by the best treaties or draft treaties. But I do believe that he has a strong determination to keep Russia together and to defend Russia against external aggression. And here we shouldn’t necessarily be thinking of military attacks, but rather of economic attacks, which can then develop into military attacks. This is an ancient Russian experience that Russia acquired long before it was able to defend itself in this way, and it is a legitimate demand for any politician in any country. This is why the idea that one should give up talking to the President of Russia about peace developments and ending the war is absurd. So who should one talk to but him, and those who are massively supporting Ukraine, however we want to assess it? One can’t take it upon oneself to say that we’re going to talk about arms transfers to Ukraine and thereby force Russia to make peace. That’s never been done before in history, and I fear that it can’t be done. And this is why the only option left is for enough responsible leaders in Europe to come together in the way that Viktor Orbán has just outlined. And excuse me for saying so, but it’s not enough for Hungary to do this alone. We need people who not only tell the story of who should win and who should lose but, because this is happening in the middle of Europe, we also need people in the European Union who will take the trouble to at least try – even if they fail – to engage in talks with someone like President Putin. And, because he knows the pointlessness of this war, they need to take him step by step towards agreeing to a diplomatic solution. This is a reciprocal process, but it has to start in Europe. With all due respect, the Americans are far away, and I hardly dare say it, but between the current president and the presidential candidates, the only one who has said that America under his leadership will contribute to ending the war – and I have my doubts – is Mr. Trump. I wouldn’t have believed either that one day I’d be praising him.
Roger Köppel: Mr. Schröder, this statement by you will also be duly torn to shreds, but I don’t feel that it will cause you psychological, existential problems.
Can I react to that?
Roger Köppel: Yes, go ahead!
I agree with the Chancellor. So Hungary alone cannot achieve results here. We’ve achieved the results that could be achieved, because in Europe today we’re talking about peace and ceasefires. It wasn’t even possible to talk about this before the Hungarian Presidency. That’s what we’ve achieved. This is good, but it’s not enough. And the Chancellor’s right: if we want more, we need the Germans and the French. I met both of them recently. I told the German chancellor, with all due respect, to hurry up and start negotiations, to contact the Russians. This is also what I said in Paris: “Hurry up and contact the Russians. And let’s start negotiating with the Russians not in secret, but in public, because otherwise a man called Donald Trump will come along, he’ll win the election, he’ll immediately start negotiating with the Russians, and we Europeans will be left sitting on a footstool somewhere in the corner, while the big boys are at the table. Why is that good?” So this whole peace mission has to be taken forward by the French and the Germans. I don’t want to divert the conversation, because the agreement is that we’re talking about Ukraine and Russia, but still, in parenthesis, I’ll say the following. Don’t you see something tragically absurd in the fact that the whole of 20th century European history, regardless of who won or lost the wars, is about the extermination of millions of Christian Europeans? Now we’re reaping the consequences of that. In Europe we have a demographic problem because we exterminated one another in the two great wars of the 20th century. This is the greatest lesson, that in the end, in such a war, the whole of Europe faces ruination. And now, in a war between two Christian European countries, people are slaughtering one another, while on the other side of Europe we’re letting in people from foreign cultures. Is that logical? So wouldn’t that be the lesson of history…
Roger Köppel: That’s a very interesting question. I find that very interesting. We’ll come back to the peace issue in a moment. I’m part of a slightly younger generation, but what strikes me is that among the politicians who are dominant in Europe today there’s a lack of engagement with European history. Perhaps there’s also a lack of a personal link to war – which Gerhard Schröder, for example, still has. You grew up without a father: your father was killed in Romania, sacrificed by a murderous war machine launched by politicians who were not challenged by anyone. You grew up in extreme poverty in a shack, while Germany was still in ruins. Your personal biography is what one might call a minor economic miracle, a minor Schröder miracle, as you rose from the shack to the office of Federal Chancellor. I’ll put this a little provocatively, Mr. Schröder, and you can moderate it. Are we today governed by politicians suffering from historical blindness and softened by wealth?
Gerhard Schröder: Despite the example, I must indignantly reject this. I expected it, of course. If you lump everything together, you make mistakes, there’s no question about that. Mistakes have been made, and I’d like to see the material, military support that’s being sent to Ukraine combined with a willingness to support the peace initiative. And we shouldn’t rely on support in European countries being provided in the long term without such a peace initiative. And in the long term it can’t be assured in America, because they have a few problems to solve, like allocating money to wars that will get nobody – really nobody – anywhere: nobody will be able to win this war – not Ukraine, not Russia, not Europe. And this is why there must be a sensible policy that does everything, really everything, to halt this war on fair terms and bring it to an end. At the same time, there are suggestions of what could be done if it’s wanted. And this is why it’s emotionally upsetting, not because of my personal history – I didn’t even know my father, so in that respect it’s personal history. But also there are thousands and thousands of people who have experienced what happened to me fifty or sixty years ago. This is why I believe that, in the current situation, we mustn’t just talk about this. This is a war started by the Russians. It doesn’t help at all if we point this out. This is for those who are against the war, because people can only be against the war. They can only be against killing one another, and it’s the job of the rational people in the European Union to say that we want to stop it. And it doesn’t help if someone is declared a war criminal. And for this, if we really want to reach a diplomatic solution we need to sit down at the table with someone. And I think that’s possible. But of course it will take effort, and we’ll have to leave the old paths of confrontation; but at least we’ll have to put our strength, our political renown, into this experiment. If we want to achieve such a solution, what could be better than to invest in it without knowing whether or not we’ll win? This risk is far less than continuing to wage war on a nuclear power. At least that’s how I see it.
Roger Köppel: Do you want to respond?
I’d like to! I don’t have as much experience as the Chancellor, but I did live under Soviet occupation for twenty-six years, so I know the Russians from the time when they were called Soviets, to give their maiden name. And the other European leaders don’t know them. I don’t see the European leaders in office today showing sufficient depth of thinking about Russia. This isn’t a criticism, because they grew up in the happy West, as a post-war generation, living in prosperity. We didn’t. We were born in a country occupied by the Soviet Union. So we have an idea of what Russia is. And in this war it’s now becoming clear that European leaders don’t understand Russia as an intellectual problem. What is Russia? How can one understand it? How can one relate to it? In European politics his kind of thinking is completely absent. I don’t want to impose my interpretation on anyone, but we have to remember that Russia is a Christian country, part of Europe, but different from us. And it’s different because what’s at the heart of its political thinking is different from what’s at the heart of our Western thinking. For forty years the central question in Western politicians’ thinking has been how to give our citizens the greatest freedom with the greatest prosperity. Our thinking revolves around freedom. A free society. And so we often think that the rest of the world thinks likewise. But it doesn’t! For example, Russian politics isn’t about freedom, but about how to keep together such a huge country of 140 million people. How do you keep it together so that it doesn’t fall apart, so that it’s not broken down at the edges by enemies to the east, to the west, to the south? This is a different way of thinking: to hold Russia together, to save Russia. It’s different from our thinking of “how to be free”. It’s a different logic. And we need to understand this. If we understand this, then we’ll know how to do politics with the Russians. Russians speak the language of strength, because their country is not held together by freedom, but by strength. Therefore if you want to talk to the Russians, you have to talk in the language of strength. You have to be rich, you have to have money, you have to have military power, and you have to have political leadership – because they always have it. And in 2022 we were quite simply unlucky, because in America the President wasn’t Trump and in Germany there was a rookie chancellor. And so something happened that shouldn’t have happened – because they didn’t understand how to do politics with the Russians. And that knowledge still isn’t there. So this is a big deficit, and Europe needs to recreate thinking about Russia and the strategic relationship with Russia. This has to be created. We no longer have that today. This is an intellectual problem.
Roger Köppel: Prime Minister, is Donald Trump the man who knows how to deal with Russia without ending up in Russia’s pocket?
I spoke to the President this afternoon. We’re preparing.
Roger Köppel: You should elaborate a little on that, Prime Minister. You need to tell us a bit more about that! Ladies and Gentlemen, we’ll keep this to ourselves, we’ll keep this confidential. It’s clear, I can assure you, that we won’t pass it on.
Good. So there will be an election in five days. And as the Chancellor has said, the picture you see when you look at the world from America is different from the one that you see when you look at it from Europe. The war in Ukraine is right here on our doorstep, right next door. From America, it’s on the other side of an ocean. America has no interest in sending billions to Ukraine, money and weapons. It has no interest in it! The current Democratic administration may have had such an interest, but the incoming Republicans have no such interest. Therefore they’re not interested in Ukraine, but in how to remove this conflict from world politics. And they’re going to do it in one way: in short order they’re going to sit down and negotiate with the Russian president and conclude a Russo–American agreement in which it’s not clear what our place will be. Because at the moment our leaders, our European leaders, are missing their chance. But the answer to your question is that, strangely enough, perhaps because of their size, it’s not difficult for Americans to understand the Russians – because the Americans, too, actually speak the language of power. It’s true that Americans don’t smell of seal grease from Russian military boots, but they do smell of McDonald’s, and this doesn’t change the fact that both speak the language of strength. So the Americans will make themselves understood to the Russians. Not in a complicated intellectual way, through history, but through realities: size, power, strength, soldiers, influence, raw materials. Period. That’s how they talk. It’s the language of strength. There won’t be any moralising there, Dear Friends! There will be Realpolitik. I know that European intellectuals look down on this, but they’re wrong, because this is why the Americans will get a result, ensure a ceasefire, reach an agreement, while we don’t get a result. We may be smarter, we may think we’re smarter, we may think we’re more intelligent, but we won’t get results, while the Americans will. This is the reality, unfortunately. I’m not happy to say this, I’m just describing it. This is the reality. So I think we can do it. Yes, President Trump will understand Russia as much as he needs to and he’ll make the necessary agreements. That’s my opinion and that’s my hope.
Roger Köppel: Before I talk to Mr. Schröder about what Europe’s role will actually be in this future world, I’ll ask a supplementary question, which is of course emotive for many of us. Mr. Orbán, we almost get the feeling that this is a spoof remake of a Cold War movie. Communism has disappeared, we actually thought that the walls had come down, the world was shrinking; and then suddenly we see new walls rising and new conflicts emerging. Are we at the beginning of a new, absurd Cold War, or are we on the verge of a breakthrough to something quite different – with BRICS, a multipolar world, a more diverse world, with China, Russia, America in partnership at the forefront? What should we be preparing for now, Mr. Orban? Or are the lamps going out here and do we need to go into the trenches? Should we fear that our children will be sent to war? How do you feel about the future?
I understand your question, but I think it’s a trap and I’m not going to walk into it, because these are very important questions…
Roger Köppel: Then you know more than me.
These are very important issues, but I want to stay closer to the ground. I said that there are two reasons why I’m an admirer of the Chancellor. One is that twenty-five years ago, during the Iraq war, he made the case for European strategic autonomy. The other reason I respect him is that he saved the German economy. And of course we can talk about a multipolar world, but there’s a problem here: somebody needs to save the German economy. Somebody needs to save the European economy. Because a multipolar world is important, but today the reality is that a German company or a Hungarian company, when it’s operating, pays four times as much for gas – 300% more – than an American company. And for electricity it pays twice as much. And no kind of smart management can eliminate a fourfold or twofold difference in energy prices. So we’re doomed. With these energy prices the European economy is doomed. And as Russian gas and Russian energy have been driven out of Europe, we have no new strategy. The old one isn’t working, and there isn’t a new one. We’ll give up the ghost. We need someone to come up with a new economic strategy to save the European economy. It won’t be Hungary. It can only come from the big boys, but someone has to do it. Multipolarity is all very well, but when I look at my gas bill and my electricity bill, that’s where you have to be clever now – not in a multipolar world system.
Roger Köppel: Mr. Schröder, I actually wanted to avoid this question, but of course in its own way it’s an obvious question. I clearly remember that you were Chancellor in 2004. In 2003, people in England were writing that Germany was the sick man of Europe. You came along with your colleagues, Clement, Eichel, Steinmeier, and you introduced the “Agenda” policy and laid the foundations for your successor, Angela Merkel, who was actually able to reap the rewards of the Agenda policy. After Viktor Orbán’s words, I must ask this question: Who will save Germany today? Yes, this is a question that we’re also asking ourselves in Switzerland about the Swiss economy. I think it’s also true for part of the Austrian economy, although the Austrians are more cunning, and they’re more strongly oriented towards the East, towards Hungary and Poland. But we Swiss are very big supporters of Germany, we have a lot to do with your economy, and it’s going downhill. Who will save Germany?
Gerhard Schröder: That’s a question I can’t answer. At least definitely not at the age of 80.
Roger Köppel: Trump is 78.
Gerhard Schröder: Yes, so he’s a relatively young man. This question cannot be answered. You need a similar reform initiative. I didn’t do it alone, but I needed a coalition, which was quite difficult to put together and quite difficult to keep together. I think that’s the key issue in Germany at the moment, as far as politics is concerned, because you really get the impression that in the governing coalition they’re fighting each other more than they’re fighting to respond to the question you’ve asked. And this is why I can’t answer your question of who can do it. I can’t even say that something should be tried with the Opposition, because I know them too.
Roger Köppel: You also know Friedrich Merz from 2005, he was the parliamentary group leader. You had a lot of fine duels. But is Friedrich Merz the man who will save Germany, Mr. Schröder?
Gerhard Schröder: As we tend to say, we have to keep things in perspective. I don’t think Germany is in a condition in which it needs to be rescued. We still have one of the biggest, most important economies in Europe, and in Germany we still have medium-sized companies that are accepted all over the world. My wife is Korean and, if I may mention it, she’s writing a paper on the question of what, in fact, German medium-sized companies have done for Germany’s economic growth and what can be learned from this. And this also shows that they’re paying attention to Germany, to whether or not we can get out of the current situation, and that this requires determined political leadership and not a debate between the coalition parties, as we’re reading in the newspapers every day. That is clear. But please forgive me for not wanting to focus on individuals – even if one of them is called Friedrich Merz – as the new bright spot for Germany. I don’t think that’s what he wants to be, and he won’t be.
Roger Köppel: Yes, go ahead!
It’s good news that the German economy is still strong, good news. But, Chancellor, somebody has to answer this question: How will the price of energy in the European economy be made equal to that in the American economy? How are we going to do that? Somebody has to answer that – if not the Germans, then somebody else, otherwise we’ll go bankrupt. I just want to repeat this over and over again. And if not to the Germans, then to someone else. But some kind of plan, some kind of strategy has to be put on the table. Time is against us. We cannot compete while spending four times as much for energy. It’s simply impossible! We’ll die.
Roger Köppel: I don’t want to go in the direction of abstraction and multipolarity, but you must forgive me, Prime Minister, because I’m a journalist and nobody is perfect. And the issue, as we discussed, is the United States of America. There are elections, yes, there are debates there, but it’s still a big, strong nation, a democracy, stronger than I think many people probably think – people who feel that Trump could end democracy. On the other side, there’s Russia, which is perhaps stronger than many believe, but not as strong as President Putin believes. There’s the dragon, China, with its incredible economic potential, on which we depend. There are the BRICS, the Global South, who say that they’re fed up with the arrogant North, the West, always wanting to tell them what should be, what tariffs should be on what. There’s Africa, there’s progress there. And then there’s Europe. And that worries me a little. So if I look into the future, I have four children, and if I look at what they’re doing, what’s the future of Europe? Seen from Africa, are we the dream of all migrants? And the future? Are we followers of the USA, are we an accessory? You’re now the current President of the Council of the EU. We expect an official vision for Europe and the European Union from you. What’s the future for Europe? What’s the future of the European Union? Does it have one? Or must everyone ultimately enter Switzerland? Is that the prospect, Mr. Orban? What do you think?
Gerhard Schröder: That is a question that only a Swiss can ask.
Roger Köppel: Okay, well I should be able to bring in my USP.
I’m not going to outline a vision, but I want to identify the problem and the solution to it, because what you’re talking about is the problem that at the moment Europe can’t solve its own leadership. We’re talking about a leadership problem. In the countries you’ve mentioned – America, China, Russia, India – there are strong, stable leadership structures and strong leaders. The question is this: Why is European-style democracy not producing strong leaders now? The merely superficial answer is that it’s because the bureaucrats in Brussels are strangling everything. This is true, but why don’t we, the leaders, strangle them? So, in order to sketch out the future of Europe, we need to answer the question of whether European democracies as we know them can once more produce strong European leadership which has a programme, a vision and strength to act, which has energy. That’s the question! I think we’re in a period of birth pangs. We’re in this period, and this is why we can’t see the situation clearly. But we can go up into a hunting blind, to an elevated hunting blind, and look out over European politics from there. Sometimes I do this for fun, as we have two thirds of the votes in Parliament and I have time to do this. Then I see that the traditional structure of European politics – on which European success, European party systems and strong governments were built – is disappearing. The basic structure of European politics over the last forty to fifty years has been Left and Right, and there have been strong leaders on the Left and strong leaders on the Right: there was Helmut Kohl, then there was Gerhard Schröder, to give you an example. But the same was true in France. But now that’s disappearing, because completely new issues are on the agenda. They’re not the traditional ones of capital, labour, distribution and fair wages. These are important issues, but they’re not the most important issues in people’s minds. There are new issues, and they’re completely redrawing the party landscape. What are the issues? Well, there’s the war. There’s migration, which has been with us for ten years. This isn’t a Left–Right issue. Then there’s the whole progressive, liberal, gender thing: families, traditional values, and the progressive, liberal gender thing. In politics people are extremely engaged in these issues. What will be the future of your child, your family model? After migration, how will there be Muslim–Christian coexistence here? Will the war come to an end? These aren’t Left–Right questions. This is how I interpret the result of the Austrian election. And this is also how I interpret the result of the Hungarian election. So here we have a traditional European Right–Left party structure which is in the process of disintegration, and now something new must be born. We’re living through this, these are its birth pangs now, it should be born now. This is the process that must be hastened in every country, in order to create new political forces that will answer these questions and create a new majority. We need a new centre! And I think that the new centre is already there in the minds and hearts of the people, and that they know more or less what they want, but that the political elite hasn’t yet realised that there’s a new majority, a new centre, and that they must be represented in politics. This hasn’t happened. And the consequence of this is that there’s no strong leadership, because there’s no strong parliamentary majority, no strong leadership at home, and no strong international politics. This is what we’re suffering from today. And here, of course, all countries are important, but there are two key countries: Germany and France. In these two countries this transformation must happen as quickly as possible. And then perhaps there will be someone who can put a vision of Europe on the table, not as an intellectual exploit, as I could, but with a power base. Because this must be a Franco–German vision – amended with small, Central European comments, of course.
Roger Köppel: Mr. Orbán, the pilot of your military plane phoned just now and said, “My God, where’s the Prime Minister?” They have to take off soon, so we have to finish in order not to jeopardise the next event. But I’d like to ask one final question, and I’d ask my colleagues to bring the gifts now, because we’ve brought some quite wonderful gifts from Switzerland for our speakers. Come forward with them now. But to finish, the question is for Gerhard Schröder. We’ve heard that there’s a leadership problem in Europe, and there are huge predatory states out there. You’ve had an eventful life. What’s the greatest bright light at the moment, the greatest ray of hope for Europe – and, above all, for Germany?
Gerhard Schröder: I don’t think you can say who it is, this person or that person; if someone thinks that there’s only one person who can do that, then that person is already wrong. More will be destroyed if we can’t get the desire to perform to take root as deeply in people as it did after the crises, after the wars – as when we started on solutions with the Agenda, although we didn’t have complete solutions and we didn’t completely manage to bring together majorities behind sometimes painful policies with promising prospects. In particular, much of democracy will also be ruined, and then the desire will come again for a big, strong leader – which will be a disaster for our societies. We’ve experienced this in recent decades, and this is still necessary – if I may mention the Agenda one last time. The question we asked then was not how we could win the next election, but what we should do immediately. Of course we didn’t give up on our objective of winning the next election, but it was clear to us that the Agenda was more important – even if we could be ruined politically. This means that sometimes the expression of real interests, the real interests of the country and the people, must be more important than political survival. And democratic leadership should be expected to acknowledge this as being right. That they don’t want to fail politically while doing what they consider to be the right thing is understandable, and that can’t be expected of a politician. In any case, we have to accept the risk of losing an election because we’re prepared to do the right thing. This is a condition of democratic leadership, because democracy needs leadership. The focus shouldn’t be on political survival, but on taking the necessary action for the country, even if we may lose the election. That was the Agenda.
Roger Köppel: The ninety minutes are up. Please give another round of applause for our guests, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. And finally, please allow me to say a few words about the gifts. This is a Swiss company with a long tradition, called Ricola. These are cough drops to make your voice strong. This is a traditional Swiss project, to make your voices heard in Europe. Thank you very much!
