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Zsolt Törőcsik: After receiving Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, Viktor Orbán said that Hungary has zero tolerance for anti-Semitism. The Israeli prime minister is in Budapest for a visit lasting several days, having been invited here by his Hungarian counterpart last November. The details of his visit will be among the subjects which I’ll be asking Prime Minister Viktor Orbán about. Good morning.
Good morning.
Here at the end of November you announced that, in response to the arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court, you’d be inviting Benjamin Netanyahu to Hungary. Yesterday Hungary also announced its intention to withdraw from this body, of which it’s been a member for twenty-five years. In those twenty-five years, what’s changed that’s led you to decide to withdraw?
Twenty-five years is a long time, and there have been major changes in the whole international political space. Many international organisations have increasingly become part of a global power structure and have turned against the sovereignty of their member states, of sovereign nation states. They increasingly exceed their remit, taking decisions that are clearly politically motivated. Quite simply, some international institutions have become political bodies. Unfortunately, the International Criminal Court is one of these. It is a political court.
The Government’s decision was immediately criticised at home and abroad. Why did you see now as being the time to take this step?
First of all, there are countries that have never been members; as they say, they haven’t been part of this treaty. First of all there are the Americans. But there are also the Russians, the Chinese and the Turks. So we can’t say that all the world’s countries have been rushing to become members of this organisation. My recollection is that our joining was linked to the idea of Hungary taking its place in the international arena after communism: membership of NATO, membership of the European Union, and seats that could be acquired in institutions that would mark Hungary’s place in this new world – a world without socialism, without the Soviet Union. It was good for this. Incidentally, Hungary has always taken a half-hearted approach to the whole thing; here I don’t want to bore anyone with complicated legal reasoning, but although we signed the statute which makes a country a member of such an international court, we never made it part of Hungarian law. Because in such circumstances the correct procedure is that a government may well sign something, but it must be adopted by Parliament, and thus made part of domestic law, part of Hungarian law. In Hungary that didn’t happen – or rather we did that, but we didn’t promulgate it. So the point is that we signed an international treaty, but we never took all the steps that would have made it enforceable in Hungary. So if someone asks why we didn’t arrest the Prime Minister of the State of Israel, despite the fact that the International Criminal Court could have expected us to, we have three answers. The first is that in Hungary it’s not the custom for us to arrest guests. The second thing is that we didn’t want to, because Israel is our friend and the whole point and purpose of foreign policy is for a country to make friends. It’s good that Israel isn’t an enemy of Hungary, and not even a country about which we’re indifferent, but our friend. And the third thing: even if we’d wanted to, we couldn’t have ordered the police to do this, because we’ve never promulgated that international treaty, we’ve never made it part of Hungarian law. So we can say that the Prime Minister was 1,000 per cent safe in Hungary: there was no custom, no will, and no legal possibility.
We’ll talk about relations between the two countries in a moment, but at the press conference yesterday you stressed that Hungary has zero tolerance for anti-Semitism. Now in a European country this should be a minimum condition. Why was it important to stress this?
Today we live in a world in which anti-Semitism is growing every day in Western Europe. So people of Jewish origin are moving out of Western Europe. There are still some there. In this regard, Hungary has perhaps the third largest Jewish community in the European Union. So there are still some in Western Europe, but the situation for them is getting more difficult every day: anti-Semitism is on the rise. As migration increases, anti-Semitism increases with it. And the fact that European leaders, especially in Brussels, don’t even want to stop migration means that wittingly or unwittingly – and I’m not making any assumptions about them, although I might have reason to do so – they’re increasing the level of anti-Semitism in Western Europe. So, not only are they not stopping it, not only is there no zero tolerance, but they support processes and migration which inevitably lead to an increase in anti-Semitism. Therefore in a European country today zero tolerance of anti-Semitism is the exception. This couldn’t be said in the West today. There they encourage, tolerate, accept and live with. But we do not.
Let’s talk about the relationship between the two countries, which you said is friendly. How does this manifest itself, even in the political or economic arena?
Firstly, for Hungary the most important thing is that we have a direct interest in the stability of Israel. So if there’s war in the Middle East, or any kind of upheaval, uncertainty or instability, we will be the victims. Right next to Israel there is Syria. The huge migration crisis and wave of immigration in Europe happened because there was a war in Syria. So what I’m trying to say is that although on the face of it that region isn’t Hungary’s neighbour, because it’s on the other side of the Mediterranean, what happens there will within days become a Hungarian national problem here in our own lives. This is why the stability of the countries there, including Israel, is in our national interest. By the way, Egypt is another key country, and if it falters, there will be even greater problems. So there’s a direct Hungarian national interest in stability in the Middle East, and Israel plays a key role in that. Secondly, we don’t know the exact figures, but I think the number of people of Hungarian origin living in Israel is over 100,000: either they have Hungarian citizenship, or they could have it – because in Hungary citizenship is granted on the basis of blood, not territoriality, and anyone whose parent was a Hungarian citizen is automatically a Hungarian citizen themselves. So there are Hungarian citizens living there. The Hungarian state has a responsibility for each and every one of its citizens. Throughout history it hasn’t always been able to fulfil this – for example in the Holocaust, the deportations, the Second World War in Hungary. But the correct position is that the Hungarian state must protect all its citizens, regardless of their origin. And this is what I’m doing, what the current government is doing, and what the Hungarian state is doing. Then again, here in Hungary, mainly concentrated in Budapest, there’s a fairly significant number of Jews – and here again the figures should be obtained from the Jewish community, because we don’t have an official figure – for whom Israel is their second homeland or another homeland. They’re not indifferent to what’s happening there, and they’re not indifferent to Hungary’s relationship with that country, with Israel. So I think that there are Hungarian citizens of Jewish origin who care about Israel, who I think are happy about it, who see security in it, and who perhaps even feel proud that relations between the two countries are good. We have a direct security interest in Israel being stable, and we also have an economic interest. We enjoy serious cooperation with Israel, with several thousand people working in Hungary in factories or in companies – mainly high-quality, high-tech companies – which are joint ventures or are Israeli-owned. There’s military cooperation between us, and we’re basically developing and buying modern military equipment together or from them. So I think that this is a prospective business opportunity for Hungary, to have very high-quality business relations with Israel. And they also make a significant contribution to our tourism, because once they feel safe here – and I can confidently say that Hungary is the safest place for the Jewish community, and here the State of Israel gets the highest recognition – they’re happy to come here, they’re happy to be here, and they’re happy to spend their money in Hungary. So there are many reasons for good relations, strategic partnership and friendship between Israel and Hungary.
Speaking of the economy, in recent days there have been a number of data releases. Real earnings, for example, rose by almost 5 per cent in January. What will it take to maintain this level throughout the year? And what’s the Government’s intention or the Government’s goal in this respect?
We’ve set ten targets for this year. It’s difficult to list them, because ten is hardly something that people – not me, but rather the listeners – want to keep in their heads. But for this year we have five economic targets and five political targets – so let’s call this the breakthrough year. We want to bring down prices, and we’ve brought down the prices of more than 800 products. This is a big battle, but we’re succeeding. We’re introducing the biggest tax cut action plan in Europe for families and for women. We’re launching the 100 Factories Programme, and the list for that will be published soon. We have a very serious programme – the Sándor Demján Programme – worth more than one trillion forints, for the support of small enterprises. We’re giving this support to small and medium-sized enterprises to help them develop. And later this year pensioners will also receive VAT refunds on food. These are the five goals that we have for the economy. We’ve announced these, so I can say that I’ve taken personal responsibility for them. We want to achieve this by the end of the year. And we have five policy programmes. These include discussing Ukraine’s EU membership with the people, ending political funding from abroad, strengthening child protection, implementing an economic development package for small communities, and conducting a crackdown on drugs. We’ve launched these, or four out of the five have been launched. We’ll do this too, and I’ve taken personal responsibility for it. In this country these ten things will certainly happen this year, because the Government is working to make sure that they do. The backdrop to this is an economic plan. The details of this were outlined by the Minister for National Economy this week. It seems that in the first quarter the Hungarian economy grew by something like 0.7 to 0.8 per cent, and the first quarter is already over. In the second quarter, growth will go up to 1.5 per cent, in the third quarter we’ll reach 3 per cent, and at the end of the year we’ll reach 3.5 per cent. So this economic growth is the basis for the economic targets I’ve been talking about. I feel that we can do this.
Even in the environment we see on the international scene? There are punitive tariffs from the US, and there’s the weakness of the German economy. At the same time we see that the employment figures are good, with, for example, the number of registered job seekers hitting a low. How can we maintain this through internal measures so that we’re independent of external factors?
The key to everything is to have work. If there’s work, there’s everything. In Hungary, never before have there been so many people in work as there are now. In light of the economic objectives that I’ve just outlined, I believe that this number will grow. Incidentally, this will also provide opportunities for the Roma minority and community, which has long been trying to maintain itself without work. So not only have there never been as many people in work in Hungary as there are now, but we’ve never before managed to integrate, help and involve in the labour market as many Roma businesspeople and workers as we have done recently. We’re very proud of the fact that this community is also finding its place in Hungary through work. This is why it’s important to maintain high employment rates – because if they start to fall, they’re usually the first people to lose their jobs. This can then have all sorts of other undesirable consequences – not only for their personal lives, but for society as a whole. So it’s important for us to be able to integrate this community through work – through education and through work – and involve them in the shared life of Hungarian society. So this is why high employment – 4.7 million jobs – is important. We want to increase this. My dream or my plan is for this to reach 5 million. Now, the external effects. There’s a problem, which you’ve touched on here with your question, that in Western Europe they’re not pursuing the same policies as we are. We’re pursuing a peace policy. We believe that the only thing Hungary needs to do in the international arena at the moment is to support US president Donald Trump in his peace initiatives, his peace plan and his negotiations. If anyone can achieve peace, it’s him. Since we want peace, we need to do only one thing: support him. Not to trip him up, not to criticise him, not to condemn him, not to undermine him, but to support him. Now, Western Europe thinks otherwise. First of all, they clearly hate the American president, and they wouldn’t be discouraged at all if he were to fail, because now he’s achieving enormous successes, and there’s this undermining of him. And secondly, the Western Europeans haven’t drawn up a grand peace plan like we Hungarians have, but a grand war plan. So they’re preparing for Europe to spend a lot of money in the longer term to finance Ukraine, to maintain the Ukrainian army, and in general to prepare for a big war. I think it’s right to strengthen our defence capabilities. The aim, however, isn’t to keep up the tension of war, but rather to have peace, the peace that the US president has achieved, while we strengthen our own defence capabilities and strengthen our economy – because the basis of any military capability is economic performance. Poor countries never have strong armies. One needs to spend a lot of money for the military, for security, for an army. Only a country with strong economic performance can afford that. This is why Hungary doesn’t have a war plan, but a grand peace plan; and this is why we’re rooting for Donald Trump – and, where we can, even helping him to achieve what we can call peace. He’s already achieved one thing: it’s obvious that as a result of his arrival this war won’t spread in our direction, into Western Europe. So when it comes to isolating this conflict, I think the US president has already succeeded in doing that. Now a ceasefire should be achieved – not least because, as we’ve been speaking, a few dozen people have just been killed on the front line. So this is a terrible war. We’re watching it from a distance, through reports, we don’t see the brutality of it at first hand; but it’s a brutal war – in which, by the way, European Christians are killing one another in the hundreds and thousands, children are losing their parents, and women are becoming widows. So terrible devastation is happening. It’s not as dangerous for us now as it was before, but it’s still happening here in a neighbouring country, in a country where Hungarians also live, and where Hungarians are being conscripted into one of the armies – into an army that’s losing. So Hungary has a thousand and one reasons why we should have peace, why we should build and devise grand European economic peace plans rather than war plans. I believe that Hungary can implement its own grand peace plan, its own economic plan for the peaceful construction of Hungary, even if the European environment isn’t favourable. So I feel that this can be done in a headwind. The figures show this, the facts show this. We have longer-term plans. Earlier you mentioned wages, and we have a three-year minimum wage increase agreement with the business community. We’ve reached an average gross monthly wage of 700,000 forints. This is still a long way from the one million that I have in mind, but it’s still much more than it was before – and of course gross isn’t the same as net, so it’s still not enough. The Fradi [Ferencváros] camp is right: “More, more, this isn’t enough!” But the direction is clearly the right one, and we can keep to it.
Yes, and for this we also need to achieve the goal you mentioned: to succeed in driving down prices. Now we’re already seeing some easing in the case of food, but we’re also seeing that the price of certain services is rising, and the Minister for National Economy has had talks with representatives of the banking and telecommunications sectors. What are the chances of a price freeze in those areas as well?
There are three areas where price increases have hit Hungarian families hard, and they’re particularly distressing. The first is the rise in food prices, where we had to intervene most quickly – because, after all, we have to eat and we can’t wait. The second area is services, where the price of telecommunications services has also risen very sharply. There have been tough discussions on this recently. I’m very confident that here we can talk to the service providers – unlike in the food market, where we’ve had to intervene. The reason I have hope here is because there are only three big companies. Meanwhile it’s different in the retail sector, where we had to reach an agreement with thousands of retailers – and that failed, because there were very divergent, fragmented interests. In the telecoms sector we need to reach an agreement with three companies; and these are serious companies – big, international companies. One of them is Hungarian, but it’s also international, they understand the issue, and I think we’ll be able to reach an agreement. And the third area where prices have broken loose is in banking. I think there’s a realistic chance of an agreement there. This is because although the banking sector in Hungary is subject to heavy taxes, and compared with other Western countries they’re perhaps subject to extremely high taxes, and we’ve involved them in sharing the overall tax burden, they’re still successful at the end of the year and they have profits. I think it’s legitimate for the Hungarian state to demand that the price of banking services doesn’t increase in the future.
As one of the goals to be achieved this year you’ve mentioned the reduction of drug use. This week you were in Tarnazsadány, a village affected by the problem. What was your experience there? What do people expect from the Government on this issue?
I went there because if you’re going to launch an operation like this, which is going to sweep through the communities of the country where the spread of these cheap, rat-poison-style drugs is causing serious damage, then one should go. So it’s no use running this from an office in Budapest. I’ve spoken to the people who live there. It’s a difficult area, there’s a significant Roma minority, and there’s an excellent leader and a great mayor who are fighting to ensure that services are there, that living standards are rising, and that everyone has a job. So I think I met responsible village leaders – who are suffering, by the way, from the activities of the 5 to 10 per cent who are involved in drug dealing, distributing these drugs and destroying the families who live there. Drugs aren’t an abstract problem: drugs eat their way into families. Let’s say that the head of the family works; sooner or later drugs will eat up his salary. And then the family will be left with no income and no financial support. Or suddenly you see that a child is in trouble. So these aren’t abstract things, but very concrete personal problems. I’ve spoken to families there who have been ruined by this. A child died from this rat-poison-like drug. So these are serious things, and they’re looking for help. Specifically in this settlement I received support, where they said, “Very good, let’s fight”. They’re ready for us to isolate these people and clear them out. This hunt has already started, by the way. I’d like to thank our police officers – and, incidentally, in this country public safety is in an encouraging condition by European standards. I’m not saying that it’s perfect, but by European standards we’re among the best – perhaps even the best. So we have good police officers, and that fact was also clear on this occasion. We’ve mobilised more than 3,500 police officers: for this work I’ve mobilised them through the Minister of Interior. There have been more than a thousand deployments, a thousand operations, and seizures of several hundred kilos of drugs. They’ve been catching dealers and traffickers. We’ve now tabled the necessary legislative amendments – which is important, as it enables the police and the people to see that their work has a purpose. So those people who are caught when we dismantle drug networks will be punished appropriately and very severely. This is also important, because both the people and the police see that they’re doing their job, they’re coordinating their activities; because there needs to be a social coalition against drugs, involving everyone from teachers to police officers to parents. But the fight will be hopeless if they see that they’re doing their job, but in the meantime the punishments don’t come or aren’t strong enough, and in a few days the same people who were arrested for drug dealing suddenly reappear, because Hungarian law allowed it, because it made it possible. So we need to demonstrate very clearly to groups in society – to teachers, parents and police officers involved in the fight against drugs – that their work is worthwhile. We need to demonstrate that their work makes sense in that we’re taking drug dealers out of circulation, confiscating drugs, confiscating the equipment, property and vehicles used for drug trafficking, confiscating the assets that have been acquired, and sentencing drug dealers to the most severe prison sentences. If we don’t do this, then their work will be meaningless and these drugs will be allowed to spread freely and do their terrible, pernicious work in destroying thousands of families. So it’s no accident that we use strong terms like “manhunt”; because we want to show that there’s also zero tolerance in this area. The Government won’t back down on this, and we’ll see this through – even if the dismantling and elimination of such a network could take many months.
One more brief question on this subject, because we’re running out of time. What’s the aim here: preventing consumption or distribution? Because critics argue that the amendments are too focused on preventing consumption.
The Constitution will say, in line with the amendment, that the production, distribution, use and promotion of drugs in Hungary will be prohibited. It’s already illegal to consume drugs in Hungary, but the law offers the possibility for people to voluntarily take part in an education course to wean them off drugs – we could even say a withdrawal course, but perhaps that’s a strong term for it. In such cases they won’t be punished for drug use the first time, but they’ll be punished the second time. So in Hungary one shouldn’t pretend that drug use is a pardonable sin – it isn’t! There’s no doubt, however, that here we’re not targeting users, but dealers – because I think that if there’s no dealer, there’s no user. And if there are no drugs, there are no addicts. If there’s no junk, there are no junkies. So I think that if we eliminate the trade and block the channels, the number of drug users will dramatically fall, and in the end we’ll achieve a drug-free Hungary – something which I think every Hungarian of good will would like to see.
Let’s talk about another issue that has a legal dimension. Protests continued this week against the amendment to the law on assembly, with demonstrators at the public media building in the early morning hours. And a debate has arisen about how far the right of assembly can be exercised at the expense of the majority. What’s the Government’s position in this debate?
I dealt with this issue yesterday and the day before, speaking to lawyers and my fellow Members of Parliament. We’re tabling an amendment to the law that will seek to take account of the rights of people who aren’t demonstrating, those who don’t take part. Because I believe that freedom of assembly is important, as it’s good if everyone can express their opinion – even in a forceful way if they want to; but it’s not normal for thousands – or even tens of thousands – of people to be stuck in traffic jams in Budapest, unable to live their lives and do their work because a few hundred people have decided to block a bridge or bridges. This is why we’re going to prevent this. I thought that the law was already clear that the right of assembly can’t be exercised to the disproportionate detriment of traffic circulation. But there was a court ruling that allowed the bridge closures. Judges apply the law that Parliament makes. If the judges decide in this way, and we don’t want such decisions to be made, then we can’t instruct the court, because the court is independent. We can do one thing: we can change the law and make it impossible for judges to close several bridges in Budapest at the same time – because that’s what happened here. So there will be a change in the law to protect normal, peaceful citizens who don’t want to take part in the demonstration in question.
Among the subjects I’ve been asking Prime Minister Viktor Orbán about were the Israeli prime minister’s visit to Budapest, economic issues and the fight against drugs.
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