Menu
Zsolt Törőcsik: At its meeting on Wednesday the Government decided on action against the hacking of bank accounts. The reason given is that recently there’s been an increase in internet fraud – some of it linked to Ukrainian organised crime – aimed at stealing families’ money and savings. One of the subjects I’ll be asking Prime Minister Viktor Orbán about is the steps being taken to prevent this. Good morning.
Good morning.
You’ve said that every year these fraudsters cause an overall loss to Hungarian families of around 8 billion forints. How widespread is this problem? Who could be at risk?
Anyone with a bank card and digitally managed savings. The pace of life has accelerated. Earlier it was difficult to go wrong, because you had to sign a piece of paper, you had to go here, you had to go there – it was very inconvenient, but it protected you. But now, it just takes a move of the hand to tap on something, to click on something, and suddenly before you’ve even noticed your money’s gone. Such things existed before – I remember it and you may remember it: we used to get SMS messages, e-mails and chat messages, but they were written in broken Hungarian. So I clearly remember that you just asked yourself who this idiot was who hadn’t learned Hungarian properly, but was sending you messages; and it turned out that at the end of this network or chain there were fraudsters, foreign fraudsters. But since then things have become more sophisticated, now it’s easier for them, and they don’t even really have to send messages. So now we’re more vulnerable. We think of ourselves as being very savvy, Hungarians have this kind of self-image: we’re a savvy people; and in America there’s a saying that a Hungarian is someone who enters a revolving door after you and comes out ahead of you. So we have this kind of legendary characteristic. But that’s not the reality: we’re a nation of credulous, good-natured people. And this is why we’re easy to deceive, why it’s easy to swindle us out of our money. You may remember there was a time when grandmothers, grandparents, used to be hoodwinked by people pretending to be their grandchild in distress. And they’d help. So we’re a country of good-hearted people for the most part, and we’re easy prey for scammers – especially now that it’s happening online. So we need to be prepared for that, and the authorities need to invest much more energy in educating people, in helping to protect them. The amount of fraud does indeed total up to around 8 billion forints. These are despicable frauds, because they’re usually based on people’s willingness to help. So they’re not deceiving people who are opportunistic themselves and who want to make money somehow by avoiding work, and through cunning: these are all honest people who have saved up something through years of work. And then, whoosh: they’ve been defrauded out of 8 billion forints. We’re trying to get this money back. It’s very difficult. So once you’ve lost it, you have very little chance of getting it back. Now the authorities are doing a pretty good job, because according to reports received by the Government, out of that 8 billion, 1.5 billion forints has been recovered. So I think that the Government’s intervention makes sense. We’ve given the police more financial resources so that more people can work on preventing and averting these frauds – and then, once the problem’s been solved, on remedying it.
The complicating factor here is that it’s usually international groups that are behind these crimes. What can be done within national jurisdiction against international criminals?
Usually the tendency is to shrug your shoulders and say that there’s nothing you can do, because the fraud’s happening here, but there are international networks behind the fraud. But that’s not quite the case. Only recently we managed to dismantle an illegal call centre network in Ukraine, from which people claiming to be from banks were calling Hungarians and swindling them out of their money. So experience shows that the police also have the means to successfully crack down on international fraudsters. By the way, 80 per cent of these criminal groups are Ukrainian. So they’re operating in a Ukrainian context, they’re Ukrainians, and they’re based in Ukraine. The Ukrainian mafia doesn’t only exist in its traditional form, which we sometimes see signs of even on the streets of Budapest – with suspicious-looking, not very trustworthy people in huge great cars. It’s not just the traditional forms of mafia that operate over there, but they’re sophisticated, clever, and can build mafia-like networks using modern technology. Ukraine is a dangerous country.
How would this situation change – either in terms of the activities of crime rings or in terms of the action taken against them – if Ukraine were a member of the Union?
Well, it would make everything much easier for them. They’d be integrated into the fabric of the European Union, they’d be treated in the same way as financial service providers within the European Union, and it would be harder to take action against them. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t talk about how difficult it is to take action against them: however difficult it is, action must be taken. Let me quote from the government meeting: we’ve identified 169 suspects and we’ve issued international arrest warrants for most of them. So there’s an international arrest warrant system in Europe, which tends to produce results. But there’s no doubt that it’s a good thing to keep the Ukrainians out. I think we’ll be alright on that score, because I see that more than 1.6 million people have already returned their ballot papers in Voks2025 [on whether or not to allow Ukraine into the EU], and in Hungarian society the awareness, idea and conviction is beginning to develop that we must be careful with this. We must be cautious, and security and defence must come first.
You’ve just mentioned those 1.6 million votes. In the meantime, the Government’s talking about the increasing pressure placed on Hungary in connection with possible Ukrainian membership, and how Voks2025 could also serve to counteract it. From this perspective, how sufficient will the votes received so far be?
Here in Hungary yesterday – continuing today – we saw the latest event in the great CPAC series of gatherings, meetings, conferences. I’ve spoken to many people, from France to Italy to Poland, and I see that in Europe – in the world of ordinary people, among people – there’s a strong conviction that the inclusion of Ukraine would result in an unmanageable challenge for the whole of Europe. Now, of course, the big question is the state of European democracy: the extent to which the opinions of the people influences the opinions of the leaders. In this respect we’re in a good position in Hungary, because here we have a system of consulting the people on major issues – sometimes in the form of a consultation, and sometimes in the form of a vote, as is the case now. This was the case with families and parenting, with gender, with migration, and it’s the same now with Ukraine. This isn’t the fashion in Western Europe: in that part of Europe the elite prefer to reserve for themselves the right to decide in these matters, and at most take people’s opinions into account as a matter of public opinion, rather than as a matter of public will. In Hungary we consider this to be the public will. But those who were here yesterday are all the future leaders of Europe. Some are already prime ministers, and some will become prime ministers. And they think very much the same as us. So yesterday we saw the whole of the Western world, the leaders who are going to take over the leadership of their own countries – and therefore leadership of Europe – in the next one, two or three years. They’re all our friends. Today they’re in the same resistance movement in which Hungary has been fighting for fifteen years: against Brussels’ empire-building, and against such nonsense as letting in migrants, leaving the education of children to gender activists, and taking in Ukraine. So this movement, this mentality, this way of thinking is slowly but surely becoming the majority in Europe, and this process is moving from country to country. And I think that if one’s been paying attention to what happened yesterday and what’s expected today, it’s becoming increasingly clear that there’s no place for the accelerated admission of Ukraine, and it’s clear that this is a risk that mustn’t be taken.
In fact, in relation to this, at CPAC yesterday you said that fast-track accession could be a pretext for a war-oriented reorganisation of Europe. Who is it that you think wants to prepare the European Union for war, and why?
The current gathering has been particularly important in this respect. After all, in Hungary we’ve founded our own Fight Club. This has been – the event yesterday and today – the International Fight Club. So in European politics we need to take account of the fact that lies have much greater traction and spread much faster than they used to earlier. Therefore if we want to have serious discussions with one another about serious decisions, such as Ukraine’s accession, we must defend ourselves against fake news and lies. Therefore we must fight for the truth – and, consequently, we must fight against lies. This is what we’re doing in Hungary, this is our Fight Club. But it relates to an international network, as everyone saw yesterday; they’re the ones who are fighting to get the real information to the people – for example, about Ukraine’s accession, and the intentions behind it. Because the answer to your question is that Brussels has responded to every single crisis that has erupted in recent times – fifteen years ago the financial crisis, then ten years ago the migration crisis, then COVID, then the energy crisis, then the inflation crisis – by trying, unfortunately often successfully, to take powers away from the Member States and to vest them in itself. So every time there’s trouble, there’s more Brussels and less national sovereignty. And then it turns out that it can’t use these rights and it can’t manage these crises. The consequences of the financial crisis are still with us. Since Brussels took over decision-making rights, the migration situation is worse than ever. I won’t even talk about COVID, as everyone knows the background of corruption on that. In energy policy Brussels has taken powers away from the Member States, and the price of energy is sky high. It’s the same with the war. So this is the method the empire-building bureaucrats in Brussels will use. I can see the signs of this: membership for Ukraine and the associated threat of war will be used – and is already being used – to take even more powers away from the Member States and transfer them to Brussels. And with their expanded powers they’ll fail to manage these crises in the same way they failed to manage the previous crises. So it makes no sense to transfer these powers. In these matters we must not allow Brussels to use the war as an excuse to take more money from us, to take more powers, to take on more debt, to drag us into debt, to build up central economic governance. We must stand up to this, because we’ll end up badly off, the Member States will be badly off, and Brussels won’t be capable of solving these tasks. This is the big question for the future. This is the battle for the next year or two: Will the bureaucrats in Brussels succeed in taking even more money from the Hungarians and the other Member States, citing Ukraine, citing the war, and will they succeed in taking even more rights away from the Hungarians and transferring them to Brussels?
Yesterday your response to these attempts was a four-point plan. To sum it up briefly, it’s about peace, sovereignty, freedom and security. But what will it take to achieve these goals? Because if we look at the political map, even the actors who were here at CPAC yesterday now sit in at least two – maybe three – party families in the European Parliament.
Yes, but slowly but surely cooperation between these party families is developing. If I add up the number of MEPs from the nationally-based party families on the Right, this number is higher than the number of MEPs from the largest European party, the European People’s Party. So there are more of us – it’s just that we’re not well enough organised. This is why a year ago we, why I, founded an alliance of European patriots – and step by step it’s been growing stronger ever since. These are now the issues at the heart of the matter. So here it may seem that we’re talking about international politics, but we’re not really. When we talk about Brussels, we’re talking about the budgets of Hungarian families, we’re talking about Hungarian energy prices, we’re talking about Hungarian inflation, we’re talking about the future of Hungarian businesses. So these are all issues that seem to be in the international arena, but as Hungary is a member of the European Union, these are all serious domestic issues. One of the most serious issues has to do with the fact that European armies are weak, and have given their money and equipment to Ukraine – thank God we haven’t, although of course that doesn’t mean that our army is strong enough yet either. As a result, we need to strengthen Europe’s defence capabilities. But for how long? So the key question is one that few people are asking now, but perhaps we can ask it: In two or three years’ time, when we’ve spent a lot of money on developing our armies and purchasing defence equipment, what will the limit be? How much money will we spend? Since Russia is seen as a threat, we could easily get into an arms race with the Russians. And if we get involved in an arms race, it will cost the Hungarian people more money, leaving less for schools, less for economic development, less for supporting home creation, less for family protection, less for family support. So the situation is that it’s in our interest for the Americans’ peace efforts to succeed as soon as possible, for us to be able to freeze the war and the front lines, to at least achieve a ceasefire, and for arms limitation negotiations with the Russians to begin as soon as possible. Otherwise all our money will be taken away by the war industry, instead of being spent on more peaceful, civilian purposes.
Now, while we’re on the subject of economic issues, there are those who argue that even armaments will boost industry. And on the subject of Ukraine, Fitch – one of the rating agencies – said this week that Ukraine is insolvent and that the costs of reconstruction are extremely high; but some people believe that reconstruction could also be an economic opportunity. So, from a financial, economic point of view, is bringing Ukraine closer to the European Union – or bringing it in – a risk or an opportunity?
Ukraine’s membership of the EU would be a financial tragedy and economic suicide. One could undoubtedly find elements in it that would mean temporary orders for European companies; but overall the economic consequences of Ukraine’s accession would be devastating for the European economy. Of course most of all they’d be devastating for us – and not just for us, but firstly for our neighbourhood’s countries, from Poland to Hungary to Romania. Millions of Ukrainians would arrive in Europe, taking advantage of the free movement of people, without screening. There’s the problem of crime and the mafia, and we’ve talked about that. But since wages are low in Ukraine, many people from there would take jobs in Europe – including Hungary – at wages below our current level. Today everyone thinks that jobs will never be at risk. But I’d remind everyone that before 2010 unemployment in Hungary was between 12 and 13 per cent. The fact that today practically everyone who wants to work can find a job isn’t a permanent state of affairs; so we have to work, we have to fight, we have to maintain this. If workers arrive in large numbers, there will be problems. It’s no coincidence that guest workers are also allowed to stay in Hungary only temporarily, at a carefully controlled rate, with extreme caution and extra guarantees. We couldn’t apply such restrictions to a Member State, such as Ukraine. And there would be a problem with the pension system: Ukrainians would be entitled to pensions in Hungary. A significant part of Hungarian pensioners’ money would go to Ukrainians, and so protecting our pension system also requires us to say no. And I haven’t even mentioned agriculture. The Hungarian Chamber of Agriculture recently made its position clear: the low-quality mass production of genetically modified products in Ukraine will kill Hungarian farmers and Hungary’s industry for the production of healthy food. So all these problems would occur. The only way to avoid this is not to talk about membership, but to cooperate with Ukraine, not to give it entitlements, but to reach agreements individually – sector by sector – in a way that’s good for us Hungarians and for Europeans. If we let them in, we won’t be able to apply such restrictions.
While we’re on the subject of the economy, the government meeting also decided to extend the profit margin cap – despite the fact that retailers had asked for it to be lifted, saying that there’s a shortage of goods, and that if the measure stays in place foreign suppliers could replace Hungarian ones. What were the criteria for the decision to extend it?
First of all, we believe that the profit margin scheme has lived up to expectations. Of course, I’ve never heard anyone say that prices are now low enough. So if we wait for someone to tell us that they feel prices are finally low, that moment will never come. In part we’re living in a period of higher inflation, with the war and sanctions having pushed inflation sky high. This has taken its toll on people, the memory of it won’t go away, it’s here in our minds, and so in the next few years we shouldn’t expect anyone to say that prices are now bearable. The shock of this doesn’t go away overnight: people feel threatened, they’re watching out and they’re protecting themselves. But even with all this, the facts show that we’ve managed to reduce the prices of 900 food products; and now that we’ve introduced profit margin controls for drugstores, the prices of another 420 products will be more affordable. I’m not saying that prices are low enough, but the situation’s better than it was. I’m not saying it’s good, but the problem has been reduced. So the profit margin ceiling must be maintained. It’s quite simply a question of protecting people against unjustified price increases. We’ve set an upper profit margin of 10 per cent for food and 15 per cent for products in drugstores. That should be enough. Anything above that represents unjustified price increases.
As you’ve mentioned, the profit margin cap has been extended to toiletries, and in several service sectors providers have voluntarily capped their prices. What other measures might be needed? Are there any sectors or product groups that are still under consideration?
Well, when I signed up the Minister for Economy, Márton Nagy, if I may put it like that, we jointly agreed that at the head of the Ministry for Economy – and now the Finance Ministry is also in his brief – I didn’t need a politician. So I don’t need someone who can talk about the economy in flowery and saccharine language. What I need is a professional who isn’t particularly interested in politics. This is why occasionally jokes are made about one speech or other given by the Minister for Economy. But he’s a resolute professional – and he’s convinced that it’s working. He’s been given a mandate: inflation must be brought down, it mustn’t be allowed to flare up again, people must be protected against unjustified price increases, and he’ll deliver on that. And if necessary he’ll propose – as he’s just done at the cabinet meeting – to extend it: we’ve now extended the profit margin regulation; and he’s determined that if necessary we’ll introduce it for new products. So he’s not a politician, and I don’t expect inspiring and elegant rhetoric from him; but we can expect him to carry out the task he’s been given in a professionally impeccable way. The profit margin cap – which was previously unthinkable in Hungary – is also working like a charm. So I trust that we can have confidence in the Minister’s proposals.
Let’s talk about another piece of news, because in recent days a natural disaster has hit Parajd/Praid. The bed of the stream above the salt mine has collapsed, and water has now flooded the entire salt mine: the mine which supplied our country with salt even in the time of Saint Stephen. An hour ago in this studio Hunor Kelemen told us that the situation is tense and critical. What immediate and long-term help can the Government provide in this situation?
What’s happening causes us great pain. Somehow Parajd/Praid is part of the Hungarian national consciousness. It was not always so, but in the last ten to fifteen years so many Hungarians have gone there, and they’ve grown so fond of the place, feeling so much a part of it, that it almost belongs to us. So what’s happening there feels like it’s happening to us: we feel pain. Therefore many people – not just the Government – have taken action in order to help; but for the time being the situation’s very difficult, almost hopeless, because the water is pouring in. In the meantime, we must not forget that there are other places in Transylvania, and especially in Székely Land. So there are also other areas. I’m thinking especially of the region of Háromszék, where the situation is serious and where help will be needed – where there are one or two metres of water in people’s gardens and houses. So the Hungarians there will need help. Fortunately, the RMDSZ [Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania] is a well-organised party, a strong party, and it represents the interests of Hungarians well – not only politically, but also economically. I’m in contact with the President of the RMDSZ, Hunor Kelemen, and I spoke to him immediately when the situation became serious. I promised that we’d give all the support we can – not only to Parajd/Praid, but to all the Hungarians living there.
In the last half hour I’ve been asking Prime Minister Viktor Orbán questions on topics including the fight against cybercriminals, the profit margin cap and the natural disaster in Transylvania.
More news
