Our article has been updated!
As we wrote, on Monday the prime minister officially took over the presidency of the European Union, which Hungary can hold for the next six months.
The host, Volf-Nagy Tünde, first asked Viktor Orbán whether he did not consider it an ominous sign that the person he took over the presidency from – Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo – recently lost the elections. Viktor Orbán said: it is not a very good sign to take over the baton from a person who failed in the EP election, but “fortunately, he is not superstitious”.
He acknowledged that the Belgian prime minister had done a good job and added: “It’s a shame that he lost the election, but if people don’t trust their leader, that’s the way it is.” “My situation is different for the time being, we have defeated the old and the new opposition, we can rightly feel that we have received confirmation from the people,” said Viktor Orbán, and then added:
I am now even more optimistic than I was, people all over Europe voted for change
According to him, parties that said enough is enough won, “Things can’t go on like this in Brussels”. “This is the first source of our optimism that people want change,” he stated.
He promised change, he is not satisfied with the new leaders of the EU
Viktor Orbán also added that, in his opinion, the leadership in Brussels still does not want change, but this only strengthens them even more in the fact that change is needed. In his view, discontent could not be accommodated by Brussels, and now they have concluded a power pact so that they will rule for another 5 years.
We will achieve the change, if not in 2 months, then in 2 years
– promised Viktor Orbán, and then went on to say that if Manfred Weber had been the president of the European Commission during the EU reform 5 years ago, it would have been a disaster for Hungary. Ursula von der Leyen’s presidency was not good either, but Weber’s had to be stopped anyway, because he is “known to be Hungarian-phobic,” he said.
Speaking about last week’s decision on the new leaders of the EU, the Hungarian Prime Minister said that a country cannot be insulted and humiliated, and that, in his opinion, Von der Leyen’s achievements in the areas of war, migration and the green transition were modest.
He also noted that, in his opinion, an unfair decision was made, and this cannot be left unsaid. The procedure in which the decision was made and the decisions themselves must be chosen separately, said Viktor Orbán, and then he added: it is not a nice thing that the Hungarians were left out of this decision, but that they did the same with Italy, which has more than 60 million people. , it “doesn’t seem like a smart thing” (by which he meant that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni did not support all of the new EU officials, apart from him).
Member States must be treated with respect, the procedure was not correct
– he said, and later referring to the person of Kaja Kallas, he also noted that “Estonia is a pro-war country”, which is why he particularly opposes his person.
“4-5 more days and many people will be surprised”
The prime minister was then asked about their founding EP faction called Patriots for Europe. He said about the parties joining this: they love their country passionately, this is also called nationalism. He then remarked:
We will become a large group of parliamentarians faster than anyone thinks […] 4-5 more days and many people will be surprised.
As he said, the negotiations are still ongoing and the inaugural meeting will be held on July 8. The members of the party family want a stronger Europe, national sovereignty and independence.
Viktor Orbán also added that the people wanted peace – it has gone wrong, instead of peace they are getting war today. They want order and security, but instead they get migration and crime. Those who let the migrants in suffer, those who now gather under our flag, they don’t want that. Instead of progress, EU citizens get stagnation, the average income in the EU is 27 percent lower than in the USA. The value of the companies here hardly increases, stagnates or decreases, while overseas there is continuous growth – he listed the problems.
Summit attack, war, migration pact
“I have discussed with everyone in the last two weeks, we have not changed the goal, I want a large faction in the EP that represents this. We will also experiment with a summit attack, but not this year,” Viktor Orbán said.
He also spoke about the fact that the Americans cannot be left out when thinking about the future of the EU, and about the Russian-Ukrainian war, which is currently the biggest concern of the EU. Donald Trump says that he will end the war within 24 hours, and the EU will you have to prepare for the situation that sooner or later the Russians and the Americans will negotiate with each other.
“Where will Europe be in this handout? Who will represent your interests? What are your interests anyway?” – listed the questions related to this, and then added: Hungary cannot answer these on its own as president in a row,
but we will prepare reports for the EU on every situation, and we can put proposals on the table, based on which the 27 heads of state and government of the union can make decisions.
“We will be there at every location important for Europe, we will explore every situation, I will prepare reports on every situation for the European leaders” he said.
Viktor Orbán was then asked about EU diplomacy, to which he said: “We haven’t come off the wall just yet either”, but according to him, diplomacy in the EU is very strange now. Speaking about the successive Hungarian presidency, he added that “we call things by their name, if we don’t make decisions in time, our country will go after us. We will talk openly about even the most difficult issues”.
We can give impetus to the union, but in the meantime we will not make a mistake of magnitude. We know what our place is in the world, and we will add it to Europe’s values.
– he said, then added: there will be “surprising things” during the Hungarian presidency, concrete steps in illegal migration.
In this regard, he noted that the previously adopted migration pact does not work in his opinion. “They don’t want to persuade Hungary to change the rules, they should adopt our rules,” said the prime minister.
The first steps to promote peace will come on Tuesday
Viktor Orbán was then asked what Hungary could do as successive president to end the war.
If you watch tomorrow’s press, you will already see the first steps
said the prime minister.
Regarding one of the goals of the Hungarian presidency – to strengthen European competitiveness – he said that it was a mistake to introduce large international taxes, and that in order to boost the economy, the actors of the economy should be supported. He noted that measures “supposedly to protect certain industries, especially the automotive industry, against Easterners” would be reviewed.
He said that during the preparation of the presidency, he discussed with the managers of the large automotive factories, who said that they do not want this, because when the Easterners “hit back”, they lose much more.
He also talked about how the green transition is not working because “we use more coal now than before the big green transition. The entire green energy policy must be radically transformed,” he said.
At the very end of the interview, it was again discussed what the biggest opportunity of the six-month Hungarian presidency could be. In response to this question, Viktor Orbán said:
To bring our continent closer to peace.
We also wrote in detail in this article about the significance of the Hungarian consecutive presidency.
We will also follow the developments of the Russian-Ukrainian war minute by minute in this article.
(Cover photo: Viktor Orbán / Facebook)
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2024-07-02 00:51:00