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In his speech, the Prime Minister recalled that he had last been to Sopron three years previously to commemorate the plebiscite of a hundred years before where the town and the surrounding villages demonstrated what loyalty to the nation was. The people of Sopron also demonstrated that we must not resign ourselves to the fate that foreign powers want to force upon us, he pointed out.
In 1921 Sopron and its environs remained in the motherland, but the great powers divided the Hungarian community with state borders imposed on us from outside. However, it testifies to the strength of the Hungarian community and its faith in the future that 103 years on we are still here, “the nation lives in this homeland,” Mr Orbán stated.
He added that at the time, after World War I, our enemies decided that the Hungarians should be small and poor. However, the Hungarians never accepted this fate, “we have always wanted Hungary to be a great and rich country.”
The Prime Minister recalled that we Hungarians had always lost out “whenever we were forced within close proximity of civilisational boundaries.” We lost when the border of Christian and Islamic civilisations lay in the territory of our country; Hungarian lives were consumed in a war of hundreds of years and we lost our country’s economic strength.
We were also losers of the Cold War when we were separated from Europe with force, he stressed, adding that Sopron itself was a loser of this era, experiencing the most difficult period of its history when the Iron Curtain was situated only a few kilometres from here, multiplying every tragedy of Trianon.
Sopron could only ever thrive and prosper whenever it was connected to the world that surrounded it, the Prime Minister stated.
Mr Orbán said the Sopron region connects together not only North and South, but also East and West, this is where we cross over from the Carpathian Basin to the region of the Alps.
What is true of Sopron is also true of Hungary: Hungary can only ever thrive and prosper if it is able to exploit its favourable geographical location, if – rather than isolating itself – it connects itself to the world that surrounds it, the Prime Minister added.
For this we need vibrant political and economic relations as well as physical links connecting Hungary to the world: airports, railway lines, bridges and “express roads.”
As it is the mission of the national government to put an end to the division and isolation of centuries past, they decided to turn that which was once a periphery during the Cold War into a central location, to put Hungary back on the map, in the very middle of Europe, he pointed out.
He said in the past 15 years the government has spent HUF 4,200 billion on road developments, 870 kilometres of motorways and express roads have been built or extended since 2010. Today as many as 21 county-ranked cities can be reached via four-lane roads, and next year this number will increase to 22.
In Hungary, the M85 express road included, now as many as 10 express roads reach the state borders, while in 2010 there were only three such roads, Mr Orbán underlined.
He said with the final section of the M85, a direct link came into being between the Austrian border and the entire system of Hungarian motorways. With the accession of Romania to the Schengen Area, “we have abolished the Romanian-Hungarian border,” and so today’s road inauguration can also be regarded as an act of connecting together the Hungarians of Burgenland with the Hungarians of Transylvania, the Prime Minister said.
He also spoke about the fact that Hungary was capable of all this on its own; the road section now completed was both designed and built by Hungarians. The only thing that is missing is that the motorway should also reach us from the side of our “brothers-in-law,” he added.
Mr Orbán further mentioned that the motorway connection of the M44 express road at Kecskemét would be completed next year, while preparations were ongoing for the first phase of the M49 and a new section of the M4. Today 10 four-lane express roads reach the state border; within 10 years, this will increase to 19, he pointed out.
He indicated that next year they would launch more than 300 projects to the value of HUF 8,100 billion, as a result of which Hungary would become a genuine connection point, a trade and distribution hub in Europe.
Mr Orbán’s plan for 2025 is “to sweep the clouds of the war from the sky,” they are working in order to turn 2025 into a fantastic year for the Hungarian economy. BMW, the Debrecen plant of CATL and the Szeged plant of BYD will start production, they will launch the Demján Sándor Programme, as part of which they will make HUF 1,400 billion available to Hungarian small and medium-sized businesses, while the government intends to allocate HUF 2,600 billion for the purposes of family support, he listed.
Wages will also increase, in the next three years, there will be an unprecedented minimum wage increase in Hungary. We can all take not one step forward, but perhaps two, he stressed.
The M85 road should serve as proof for anyone who has doubts, “we made a pledge, we started it and we did it,” Mr Orbán said in conclusion before inaugurating the new road section, thanking everyone who took part in its construction.
