Orbán: Those protesting the Sovereignty Protection Act are mercenaries

For more than a decade, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has only given interviews to the government-friendly press, and he speaks at the public station Kossuth Rádió on Fridays. Although the format is an interview, there usually aren't any unexpected, surprising questions, and the "questions" are mostly worded as statements. The Prime Minister himself explained in 2019 why he doesn’t talk to unfriendly press: he believes that an interview is not a bullfight and that there are other channels for reaching voters.

“I've got a long list of counter-arguments”

This Friday, Orbán spoke from the EU summit the day after Ukraine was given the opportunity to start accession talks. Although the Hungarian government opposed this, Orbán did not veto it, but chose to leave the room during the vote. So the decision in favour of Kyiv was made without him, but with the support of 26 countries.

Speaking about this decision, Orbán said: “It was a long and difficult debate, I spent eight hours trying to convince them not to do this”. In the Prime Minister's view, this is not the right way of giving help. "They could not be persuaded." "They asked me not to obstruct them" – he said, explaining that this was why he did not veto the decision. He said that the EU's argument was that the negotiations would be a drawn-out process anyway, which the Hungarian government would be able to block throughout the process. But Orbán said that he did not want to be part of making the wrong decision, “so I left the room instead.”

Orbán said he has a long list of reasons why he thinks it is a bad decision to open accession talks with Ukraine.

One of these is that it will require taking out a joint loan, which he is opposed to in the first place. He said that the EU had already made a similar exception during Covid, and "that didn't turn out well either".

Ukraine "isn't doing well in the war", he said, adding that we shouldn't be helping the country with weapons, but should instead work on stopping the war. As usual, he did not say what conditions of peace would be realistic for starting peace negotiations, given that the aggressor Russia has shown no intention to do so, and considers the annexation of the occupied territories a done deal.

The emergency brake

"The Hungarians' money will not be given to Ukraine" – Viktor Orbán said, given that he has already vetoed this part of the decision. The revised EU budget (which also includes another financial aid package to Ukraine) can only be approved with the agreement of all 27 member states, but Orbán refused to give his approval at the summit, so, "there is no money" for it, he said.

The Hungarian people will not be paying the financial and economic consequences of this decision – if the interests of Hungarian farmers have to be protected, the Hungarian government will "use the emergency brake", he explained.

This is a bad decision, it should not have been taken, but the leaders of the other member states "were relentlessly pushing to go in this direction". Orbán said that Hungary would not accept the financial consequences of the decision to begin the accession process of Ukraine. Hungary's conscience is not burdened by this bad decision and the process can be stopped in midstream too, the Prime Minister concluded.

EU funds: what's fair is fair

The decision to allow Hungary to access roughly a third (about €10 billion) of the frozen EU funds allocated to it coincided with the EU summit.

The Prime Minister did not say whether there was any link between accepting the decision on Ukraine's accession – and backing away from the veto – and the partial unblocking of funds.

He did say that in his view, the events of the last few days provided an instructive lesson:

Hungary has shown that it can do without EU funds, and Brussels has shown that it's willing to use force in politics, but in the end it had to come to an agreement.

"What's fair is fair", Orbán concluded, adding that the unlocked funds would soon be injected into the Hungarian economy.

A protest of mercenaries

"The Hungarian constitution is a well-constructed defense system" – and it guarantees sovereignty. "But the mice tend to sneak in by the feet, so the dollars roll in" to the left-wing media, and to the NGOs partly linked to the left which use foreign funds to influence elections. It was clear that this section had to be blocked off, which is why the Sovereignty Protection Bill was passed, to close these loopholes.

This way, money will no longer be able to roll into the left's cash box and their media, Orbán said, repeatedly referring to a section of the press as one which could pose a threat to sovereignty.

"It is the people who make a living from it who are protesting, this is a protest of mercenaries."

The national consultation assists the government

"The government's job is to understand what people think." With the national consultation, "people are given the opportunity to truly consider subjects they perhaps don't think about too often. They can now think about them carefully and give their opinion. And this helps the government," Orbán said, explaining why there had to be a national consultation on issues related to Ukraine.

He said he needed an argument to be able to cast a veto against 26 member states, at least on the issue of the EU's budget changes. The Prime Minister did not mention that the questions in the national consultation are fairly leading, and are not suitable for expressing nuanced opinions, which is why the agreement rate is regularly above 95%.