Most Friday mornings, Hungary’s Prime Minister gives an interview on one of the public radio stations. Since the independent media has not had a chance to interview him for several years, these weekly radio interviews provide a rare opportunity for finding out what the leader of the country thinks about current events, how he sees his opponents and any issues at hand.
Right now, Europe is playing with fire, it's teetering between peace and war, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in his semi-regular Friday morning statement delivered in the form of an interview on the public station, Kossuth Rádió. As previously reported, so far this year he has done this much less often than has been customary for him. Orbán called the Polish Foreign Minister's statement according to which “there is no political solution to the conflict, it can only be solved by brute military force '' shocking. According to him, “these statements are not communication bubbles or blips, they embody real political thinking and intent.”
The Prime Minister recalled that in 1999, as soon as Hungary joined NATO, it had to provide airfields for NATO air forces to bomb Serbia. "There was an American effort to open a northern front in addition to the southern front", which would have affected Hungary's southern border, “the Americans had a specific military concept as to what Hungary should do, which I rejected, and thus succeeded in keeping Hungary out of the war.”
Thus according to Orbán, he personally intervened at the time to ensure that Hungary stayed out of the war, and this is why there was no war between Serbia and Hungary. This would have damaged relations between the two countries for decades. Hungary is in favor of peace this time too, he said, referring to the current war between Ukraine and Russia.
"We did not want to take part in World War I and World War II either". "We will not allow Hungarians to be forced into a war for the third time", as they would end up paying the highest price for it.
Orbán said the West was gradually drifting into war. This has escalated from sanctions to the sending of weapons.
“I am concerned for the future of Europe.”
"The US president has made it clear that the US economy is benefiting from providing weapons to Ukraine", "and then there are the NGOs, Soros, and the characters involved in all kinds of shady stuff", even though "the majority is on the side of peace. And all the while, European leaders, – I don't want to say they are marching towards war, but they are taking steps in that direction daily", Orbán said.
And if the war should escalate, even if the front doesn’t end up reaching Hungary, we will feel the consequences before others do. "Afterwards, the French will go home, the Americans will go home, but we have nowhere to go home to, this is the country we have, right here in this historically risky region."
During the interview, Orbán spoke about the events of 1999 several times, saying that it took courage for the country to stay out of the war, i.e. NATO's bombing campaign against Serbia. What the Prime Minister failed to mention in the interview was that the intervention was launched after the Serbian army embarked on an ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo.
"There are pro-war governments both in Europe and in America." "The reason why Hungary stands out is because it is pro-peace" – that is why they want a change in our government.
"They want to set up a pro-war government in Hungary so that we would join the European or Western mainstream". “For this to happen, they need agents, and that's what the left-wing parties are, there's no way around it.”
According to Orbán, the anti-government forces are financed from abroad in order to achieve this. "Thirty pieces of silver might not be a lot, but it's not a small amount either," he said, describing political forces outside of Fidesz as essentially pro-war, foreign agents who are working against their own country.
"Only those who vote for Fidesz are voting for peace. Those who vote for the left will vote for war. If you want peace, you will vote for Fidesz," Orbán concluded.
"It is possible to have a European Parliament that will pull Europe back from the brink of war", provided it has the right composition after the EP elections on 9 June, he explained.
This is not the EU we joined
Speaking about the 20th anniversary of Hungary's EU accession, Orbán said that this is not the EU Hungary joined. I campaigned for joining the EU in 2004, and I still believe that it is better to be inside the EU than on the outside, but this is not how things were when we joined.
“I mean, at the time, there was no talk of millions of migrants being allowed into the EU, nor did anyone say they would be forced on those who didn't want them to come in the first place, like us Hungarians. Or that if you say that a family is made up of a man, a woman and children, you will be bashed in the European liberal media. Or that if a country's constitution states that the mother is a woman and the father is a man, as we did in Hungary, then it would face retaliation, that's not what Europe used to be like!”
“We joined because Europe meant peace and prosperity. Now we are in an economic crisis. The Europe we entered generated twenty-some percent of the world's economic power. We have now slid back from there, our competitors have all overtaken us, that was not what we had talked about. And there was also no talk of European leaders dragging the continent into war instead of peace.”
"The first thing worth saying when evaluating the past twenty years is: Gentlemen, this is not what we agreed on. Mother, this is not the horse I wanted,"
Orbán said.
He then returned to the war as the cause of the country's economic difficulties. This is the reason why production has been lower and inflation higher. That is why the government wants to intervene, but it would only do so by negotiating with the economic players. The PM said that he had instructed Márton Nagy (Minister of Economy) to "not act by force, even though it could be done by issuing decrees, but we shouldn't arm-wrestle anyone", he said of the price of fuel, adding that on this, their goal is “to ensure that the Hungarian people don't pay more than the average price in neighbouring countries.”
Orbán said that "the Germans were really ruined" by the Russian-Ukrainian war, they are paying twice as much for energy as they did before the war, when they used to import from Russian sources. "Therefore, the Hungarian economy would have doubled if there had been no war."
"As for the action radius of the Hungarian economy, we need to expand it", even though "Europe will still remain the focus". This is why we are building relations with China and Africa as well, Orbán said in conclusion.
Viktor Orbán avoids critical questions at home. It’s been years since he gave an interview to independent media. However, for several years, most Friday mornings he has been a regular guest on state-owned Kossuth Rádió, where he is interviewed by a lead editor of the public broadcasting service (operating from an annual budget of 320 million euros). Katalin Nagy has been almost exclusively the only person allowed to interview Orbán on the state-owned channel throughout his third and fourth term with a two-thirds majority in parliament. She has received the state decoration of the Cross of the Order of Merit of Hungary and doesn’t shy away from asking questions.