At his campaign event held on Dózsa György Square in the Fejér County city, Mr Orbán said the war has moved closer to us, and however painful it is, Europe has decided to march into this war ever more deeply. The Prime Minister stated: at this point, they are sending money and weapons, but they have already agreed that later European soldiers will be stationed in the territory of Ukraine. The task is to stay out of this, he pointed out.
He added: we do not want to take part in the Ukrainians’ war, we will not give soldiers, we will not send weapons, we will not give away the Hungarians’ money.
Mr Orbán pointed out that in the past year in the European economy, a million industrial jobs had been lost and entire industries were in trouble. There, there is no 11 per cent minimum wage increase like in Hungary, there, there is no fourteenth monthly pension under introduction, there is no doubling of the tax benefit available in relation to children, he laid down. Not because they would not like these things, but because they are sending their money to Ukraine and one forint can only be spent once, he added.
During the period ahead, we will have to persevere, at the expense of any conflict, with not sending our money to Ukraine, the Prime Minister laid down in his speech.
He also stated: we cannot consent to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blackmailing us into Hungary being detached from cheap Russian energy. The Prime Minister said on Thursday, he will have to fight a battle at the summit of prime ministers in Brussels because President Volodymyr Zelenskyy decided to impose an oil blockade on Hungary and shut down the Druzhba oil pipeline. He has done so because he has demands vis-à-vis Hungary “which we are not, and I personally am not, prepared to meet,” he pointed out.
One of his demands is that we detach ourselves from cheap Russian energy, he said. He told his audience that at present, people in Hungary paid approximately HUF 250,000 a year on average for household energy. People in Poland pay HUF 900,000, while people in the Czech Republic as much as a million forints because they have detached themselves from cheap Russian energy, the Prime Minister highlighted.
“If they forced us, too, to follow suit, then you would lose a whole monthly salary due to higher household energy prices,” he pointed out. He stressed that this was not a political, but an existential, family and financial matter.
Mr Orbán also highlighted that with the kind of 20th century behind us that we had, no Hungarian in their right mind can want war, but it is not enough to not want war, we must also be able to stay out, and as he has succeeded in keeping Hungary out of the war for 4 years, he sincerely hopes that he will be able to do so in the next 4 years as well. He stressed, however, that we could only stay out of the war with national unity.
He also said that they won the 2022 elections because the electors trusted them and “believed that we would be able to honour our pledge to keep Hungary out of the war,” he said, asking members of his audience to renew their anti-war alliance on 12 April.
He further highlighted that rather than a two-thirds majority, they needed very robust national unity which was possible with and without a two-thirds majority. “Yet, I suggest that we do it with a two-thirds,” Mr Orbán said.
He said in the past four years, the patriotic government has been able to stay out of the flawed policy of Europe which is increasingly drifting into the war and has been able to say no to a war which we have nothing to do with. Mr Orbán stressed: we are not a heartless people, we have taken in the refugees fleeing here from Ukraine, we have provided them with shelter, food and work, their children are able to study in their mother tongue, while the same has been denied to Hungarians in Transcarpathia. He highlighted: but they cannot ask us to help them by destroying ourselves in the process.
“In addition to staying out of the war, the other most important priority is that we must not allow anyone to take away from us that which you have earned in the past 16 years with hard work,” the Prime Minister said, mentioning higher salaries, the reduction of household energy bills and the family support system. “We should not allow them to pocket Hungary,” he added.
He observed: between 2010 and the present day, they have taken HUF 15,000 billion away from large international corporations, banks, energy companies and multinational chains and have given it to Hungarian families, pensioners, children, schools and health care. However, those from whom the government has taken this sum away from are not happy; therefore, it is no surprise that the representatives of large international corporations are emerging in the camp of the government parties’ opponents one after the other.
They have been sent here to take back the HUF 2,000 due in 2026, which the government has already built into the family support system, and then step by step “to take back everything we have taken away and given to the Hungarians.” “Do not allow international big capital to pocket Hungary. If we are able to do that, then Hungary will preserve its economic stability,” Mr Orbán stated in summary.
Mr Orbán highlighted: it is often said that one election or another is a historic, life-changing election, but it is rare that almost a whole country realises the truth of that statement.
The Prime Minister stressed: it was possible to restore the thirteenth monthly pension and to start introducing the fourteenth monthly pension “because we haven’t sent our money to Ukraine.” Last year, while the war was blocking the economy’s performance, they doubled the tax benefit available in relation to children and introduced lifelong tax exemption for mothers with minimum two children. We have not just a patriotic, but also a family-friendly government, the Prime Minister pointed out, stressing that if there are children, there is a future, if there are no children, there is no future.
He said they do not interfere with anyone’s life; they support families because they find it unfair that people who decide to have children should be any worse off than people who do not, given that “families are the most important from the viewpoint of the future.”
Regarding the campaign, Mr Orbán said on Tuesday in Eger, he was told that according to some news reports, “we are more or less on a par with our opponents: we are more, they are less.”
On Monday, he spoke before an enormous crowd in Kaposvár, but he was also surprised at the sheer size of the Sunday Peace March because rumours were being spread that Fidesz supporters are running short. “Then I realised that our people usually come forward at the very end; the same as we only pay our taxes on the very last day, as far as I can see, we only start mobilising ourselves for elections towards the end, but then with a vengeance,” he stated.
He recalled: four years ago, a miracle occurred in this constituency; without Lajos Mészáros’s mandate, the government side would not have had a two-thirds majority, and then he asked members of his audience to support their candidate intending to repeat that feat, describing the politician as a fantastic person who puts his heart and soul into the job and loves the locals. “You will find no one better than him,” Mr Orbán said.
His message to young people was that it is nice to go abroad and it is useful to study and to work abroad, but the moment will come when they start missing their country, when they need a safe background, a place to go back to, and then they will need a country of their own, Mr Orbán pointed out. However, “in order for you to have a country, in the upcoming elections you will have to stand up for Hungary and for your country so that later you have somewhere to come back home to and for Hungary to continue to remain a Hungarian, country,” he laid down.
Today, the government and politics in Hungary looks upon workers as the country’s strongest propulsive force, the Prime Minister said, changing the topic. It is not just that in 2010 only 3.6 million people had jobs, while today as many as 4.7 million and “I sincerely hope that by the end of the next four years, we will have five million Hungarian workers,” Mr Orbán said. Beyond the fact that if there is work, there is everything, the honour of work, too, has been restored in Hungary, he pointed out.
In his words, his experience is that the order of the world when a person is judged on the basis of the quality of their work is being restored. This is workfare society “because we are better off with a blue-collar worker doing their job decently than with ten brain surgeons doing a shoddy job,” Mr Orbán stated in Dunaújváros.
