We held a Hungarian Day in Washington, Mr Orbán said, starting the press conference he held together with Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó which was broadcast live on the M1 current affairs news channel. He recalled that there had been not only a summit between the prime minister and the president, but also bilateral ministerial talks, including with the participation of the minister of the economy, the defence minister and the minister responsible for innovation and cultural affairs.
He stressed: the President of the United States of America expressed his sincere appreciation for Hungary and sent his greetings to the citizens of Hungary. He indicated that Donald Trump thought of Hungary not only as a remote country whose citizens had brought much glory and a great many achievements to the United States. The expression of appreciation on his part is not just diplomatic courtesy, but more than that, it has genuine content, “and I felt that this is a sincere friendship and acknowledgement towards Hungary,” Mr Orbán explained.
Regarding bilateral talks, the Prime Minister said the leaders of two states sharing the same alliance met; they did not identify a single meaningful issue on which the opinions of the two states differed or clashed.
There is no strategic difference or clash between the interests of the two countries, but there are a great many overlaps, and there were also affairs to be settled, he added.
The Prime Minister announced that they had managed to protect the reduction of household energy bills; Hungary will continue to have Europe’s lowest energy prices. “We have created all necessary pre-conditions which means in specific terms that we have received full exemption from the sanctions in the case of the TurkStream and Druzhba pipelines,” he stated, adding that there are no sanctions that would restrict supplies from those pipelines or would make them more expensive.
“This is a general exemption without any temporal limit,” Mr Orbán stressed.
In answer to a question relating to exemption from the sanctions imposed on Russian oil and natural gas, Mr Orbán said they sat down, explored the topic, and came to the conclusion as a result that Hungary’s situation was substantially different from that of other European countries. Hungary’s safe energy supply cannot be maintained, Hungarian families and businesses cannot be supplied with affordable energy if sanctions are upheld on the two “key pipelines,” he stated.
He stressed that this was why they had asked Donald Trump to cancel these sanctions. “We asked for exemption from all sanctions in respect of two pipelines, the one that conveys gas from the South and the one that brings oil from the East. The President decided, he said they will not uphold the sanctions in respect of these two pipelines,” the Prime Minister said, relating proceedings of the talks.
Members of the press asked the Prime Minister about the danger averted. In response, the Prime Minister said that when they arrived in Washington, “we were in grave trouble, we were in the water up to our necks, or perhaps the situation was even worse. Now, we’ve managed to extricate ourselves from this.”
He recalled that the United States had recently announced the set of sanctions that they intended to apply to Russian energy in general, regardless of the countries affected. In his words, this set of general sanctions would have floored Hungary. He stressed that from the end of November all Hungarian households would have paid two and a half to three times more for household energy compared with what they had paid in October or November. By Hungarian standards, this would have been an unbearable price increase for households, not even mentioning businesses. Many of them would have gone under, would have ceased operations, and a great many people would have found themselves unemployed, Mr Orbán pointed out.
He added that “we were in a vice, or we already had the rope around our neck, it’s from here that we had to extricate ourselves” which they did. He stressed that this was mostly owing to Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó because the preparations for the final decision were in his hands. They had compelling arguments which the US President could accept.
In answer to a question, he made it clear that there is a set of US sanctions and there is also a set of Brussels sanctions in relation to energy supply systems. As a result of the negotiations now conducted in Washington, Hungary has managed to pull itself out of the US sanctions. However, the struggle against the European set of sanctions “is another match” which will have to be fought in Brussels; this could take place in December, he added.
Mr Orbán also announced that an agreement had been reached with the American party about the issues of nuclear cooperation. They also came to an agreement on the issue of the Paks2 project: the sanction introduced by the Biden administration will be cancelled; no American objection to the construction of the Paks2 nuclear power plant has emerged, he added.
He said Westinghouse will join Hungary’s nuclear energy industry which is a new development; Americans had never before been involved in this sector in Hungary. He announced that they would first buy fuel from the American company.
He said they also agreed to introduce American technology in Hungary and to pave the way for the installation of small modular reactors. To this end, Parliament will be required to amend a few laws next week, he stated.
Hungary will also receive the US technology that is better and more modern than the technology we are currently using, and with the aid of which we will be able to store spent nuclear fuel in safe circumstances.
At his Washington press conference, the Prime Minister further informed members of the press that we could count on the United States in the preservation and strengthening of Hungary’s financial stability. In light of this, we will establish new forms of US-Hungarian financial cooperation.
He said further US investments will come to Hungary. He mentioned that some 1,400 American businesses operated in Hungary at present, employing approximately 100,000 people. Mr Orbán said it is important in the case of the latest investments that, in addition to creating jobs, they also raise the technical standard of the Hungarian economy. The Prime Minister indicated that they had concluded defence and space industry agreements. By virtue of the former, Hungary will have access to the most cutting edge defence armaments.
Mr Orbán also informed members of the press that both the US and the Hungarian governments were determined to continue the ongoing peace efforts. The Budapest summit is on the agenda, but for the time being, there is no way of knowing when the event serving to conclude the conflict in Ukraine could be held, he indicated, adding that Hungary is ready to offer all capabilities with which it could help bring the war in Ukraine to a conclusion.
In answer to a question concerning the chances of peace, Mr Orbán said in Hungary it is evident to almost everybody that Ukraine is unable to defeat Russia in a war. However, in America and in large European countries, people ask the question of who will win as if it were an open matter. “All I can say is what I told the US President today about whether the Ukrainians could win, that ‘there are miracles,’” he observed.
Responding to a news report about an energy industry agreement, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said the report is correct inasmuch as that the agreement does indeed consist of three points, but “on nothing else.” The supply of nuclear fuel elements is an item worth approximately a hundred million dollars, meaning that any report about hundreds of billions is fake, he said, adding that during the period ahead, the Hungarian economy’s energy needs will increase and so will Hungary’s nuclear capacity. Therefore, in addition to the existing supply contacts, we also need new nuclear fuel elements. He pointed out that they were procuring US nuclear fuel in addition to maintaining the already existing supply contacts.
Regarding small modular reactors, Mr Szijjártó said the amount involved depends on how many will be built. The Hungarian economy keeps breaking investments records, enormous factories are being built in Hungary, new jobs are coming into being in the tens of thousands, and these power plants could be used to supply their power needs, the Minister pointed out. The amount of twenty billion dollars is correct if it means the construction of approximately 10 to 12 power plants, he stated.
Mr Szijjártó also pointed out that the price of the technology relating to the storage of nuclear fuel was between a hundred and two hundred million dollars.
He said they will also diversify in the case of liquefied natural gas, meaning that “we will add new ones” to the existing gas supply sources.
Regarding the space industry talks held during the day, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade said they had negotiations with the executives of the company called Voyager Technologies which would like to send into space the world’s first commercial space station by 2029. He indicated that Hungarian space industry businesses, too, contributed to the construction of the space station, and the company was investing in Hungary accordingly. The parties cooperate in training related to space missions, while they also conduct joint space experiments and track them together. Mr Szijjártó mentioned that two Hungarian astronauts had been trained for this year’s successful mission, and not sending a trained astronaut into space “would be an enormous missed opportunity.”
Mr Orbán recalled that while during the day they had spoken the most about energy, after the technological transition now under way, this would be a pre-condition of continued operations.
The goal is to create a completely new 21st century Hungarian economy, this is why we had talks about the space industry, defence industry and the issue of the most sophisticated technologies, the Prime Minister observed. He said Hungary will have to implement a major transition in its economy if it wants to remain among the states of the modern world economy.
In answer to a question, Mr Orbán described the agreement that the European Union concluded with the United States on tariffs as low-quality, shameful and terrible. “In Budapest and in a few large European capitals we ourselves would have been able to table proposals of much better quality, and we would have reached a better agreement than the one that was negotiated by the Brussels bureaucracy,” he said, taking the view that coordinating interests requires certain intellectual and political efforts, and in this department Europe is not doing well. “The Americans are effectively mowing us down,” he observed.
He stressed: he made it clear to the US President that he never asks for any external assistance for the settlement of our disputes within the European Union. We are strong enough, our positions are good enough, we have enough means at our disposal to win these battles relying on our own national resources, he added.
