He said Brussels wants to levy taxes, through the introduction of a complex system, on people and families who have their own homes and cars. However, the Visegrád countries are resisting, and at the European summit due to be held next week, they will not under any circumstances consent to decisions which would further raise the prices of electricity and gas.
Climate protection is a good thing, Mr Orbán observed, stressing that the bill should be picked up not by members of the public, but by the large corporations that are responsible for the emission of pollutants.
This requires a reform of the price regulation system and the elimination of speculative elements, he said, mentioning that capital must not be allowed into this area because that will lead to trouble.
He highlighted that in Vienna and Berlin people pay twice or three times as much for electricity and gas as in Budapest, while in Sweden people pay eight times more for gas than we do in Hungary.
He recalled that one of the first struggles of the government formed in 2010 was the household energy price battle fought with Brussels for years. He mentioned that should we use market prices, an average Hungarian family would pay HUF 380,000 to 400,000 more a year than they do at present. He stressed that the Gyurcsány-Bajnai Governments had granted international and multinational companies permission some fifteen times to raise prices, and also now “the power group hallmarked by the name of Gyurcsány” keeps demanding in Parliament that the government introduce market prices for gas and electricity services.
Regarding the coronavirus epidemic, the Prime Minister stressed that the third vaccine amounts to a life insurance policy. He added that he himself will receive the third dose of the vaccine this weekend.
He said the fourth wave of the epidemic “is slowly surrounding Hungary, it is from the East at any rate,” observing that in neighbouring Romania – where there is only a 29 per cent vaccination rate among the population in contrast to 59 per cent in Hungary – the situation is alarming. He added that Hungary decided to grant the Romanians’ request and to provide care for fifty patients, for the time being, in two hospitals near the border.
The Prime Minister encouraged everyone to consider wearing face masks, despite the fact, he added, that the face mask in itself offers no protection against infection, only the vaccine does. He said the vaccine works; less than one per cent of those who have been vaccinated become ill with the coronavirus.
He also said the fourth wave cannot be avoided, the delta variant of the virus is much more aggressive than earlier mutations were. As a result, the danger is also much graver, and so he asked people not to take chances and to have themselves vaccinated.
He stated that in the summer Hungary made the necessary preparations in order to be able to manage even a very intensive autumn epidemic wave without the country’s operation having to grind to a halt. There are vaccines, hospital beds, ventilators, medicines, nurses and physicians as well. At the same time, he indicated that in Hungary the fourth wave has not yet reached the level that it has in many other countries.
He said Hungary has every hope of having a self-developed vaccine that could be manufactured by the Hungarian vaccine factory. This, however, is not sure yet, and so in the interest of the operation of the factory, we must ensure that there are also orders for vaccines developed elsewhere, he said commenting on the fact that Hungary could receive the technology of the Sputnik vaccine as early as this year.
In the context of migration, the Prime Minister took the view that Western Europeans have given up hope that “their own nations’ men and women” could conquer the demographic crisis. “They said if it doesn’t work, if not enough children are born, Germans, Belgians or French, then the missing ones must be obtained from elsewhere. We are one German down, an African or an Asian will do in his or her place. It’s just numbers, any one will do on the conveyor belt,” he said. In his view, this is a mentality that Hungarians find clearly shocking.
He stressed that by contrast Hungary carries on fighting in order to remove the obstacles, due to which fewer children are born than young people would like to have.
He took the view that it is sheer “Western arrogance” that they want to force their policy related to migrants on Hungary because people in the West are not content with just being successful; they also insist that they are right. It is not enough that they are free, can live as they want to and can adopt decisions that their own people desire; they also want everyone to recognise that their decision is the only good decision, and to adopt it. In other words, they want to tell us how to live, the Prime Minister argued, taking the view that the bigger a country with such a mentality, the bigger a threat it poses to Hungary.
The Prime Minister also said the Germans are our friends, and “we spent many a beautiful year together with them”. However, recently, for instance, on the issue of migration, Germany wants to create “a German Europe” in which they want to tell us what Europe should be like. He stated that Hungary is organising resistance, 12 countries are now in the process of composing a joint message about what measures should be taken to protect the external borders of Europe instead of the mandatory quotas.
He said one cannot defend the borders “with bouquets of flowers, cuddly toys” and “reception committees,” and migrants who attack the border and want to get past the fence must be detained.
