Orbán: Europe missed the right moment to initiate peace

The Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry held an event to mark the beginning of the economic year on Monday. One of the speakers was the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, who began his speech by saying that "our economic ministers are doing great". He said there are two types of economic policy: the one focused on trade unions and the other on chambers of commerce, the former of which is facing a crisis in Western Europe. Fortunately, however, the Hungarian government has been cooperating with the chamber up until now. He is therefore optimistic about the economic policy of the years ahead.

In Orbán’s opinion, the task of the prime minister is to ensure that simple economic considerations do not disappear behind economic policy and to represent common sense. This means that the head of government has to keep a watchful eye on four areas:

• It is always better to be the one who is owed than to be the debtor. "Unfortunately, this is not yet the case for us," he said, referring to Hungary's public debt.
• We should always be earning more than what we are spending. We are not quite there yet on this one either, according to the PM.
• It's better to work than to dawdle. If we don't work, we will starve. In Orbán's opinion, Hungary is doing well on this one.
• It is always better if we are the ones making money off of others, than the other way around.

According to Orbán, the world's economic and political map is being reshuffled, and this process has now picked up speed. There is a geopolitical and an economic dimension to this. The former is important for us because given that the Western and Eastern parts of the world are judging everything completely contrary to each other, it poses a historical dilemma. He cited the Russian-Ukrainian war as an example of this: the West has jumped into this war and sees it as its own war, while the East has either remained silent or is more pro-Russian. In his view, the situation is similar with respect to the conflict in the Middle East and the conflict between Taiwan and China. He argued that these are causing economic logic, and even technological development to be subjected to politics.

Orbán stressed that it does matter how this dispute ends. The position of the West, he says, is to detach itself from the rest of the world. There is, however, a different way of thinking, according to which if we were competitive, we would not be trying to stop the East's advance by political means.

The importance of maintaining Hungary's connectivity

For Hungary, the important thing is whether the debate will end in interconnection or disconnection, because if the Cold War returns, we will once again find ourselves on the borderline. In that scenario, the West will be "a dim, dusty place of no interest to anyone". The Hungarian Prime Minister said that although we are part of the West, we have bet on maintaining our connectivity, which accounts for our cooperation with Turkey, Russia and China. Our objective is to further strengthen our economic ties with Russia in areas where sanctions allow, because the war is not going to last forever.

Europe missed the right moment to initiate peace

Orbán also spoke about arming Europe, and stated that this is something which cannot be avoided, and on which Hungary has gotten a headstart, and the government is developing the armed forces at a historic rate. He said it is clear that the war, which he considers a proxy war between Russia and the West, will not be won by the West, but it won't be won by the Russians either. The only solution, therefore, will be peace talks.

According to Orbán, the party that feels that time favours the other side should be the one to initiate the ending. He added that Hungary is among the few who believe that time is on the side of Russia. The only way to avoid the Russian border being extended towards Hungary is to reach a peace agreement as soon as possible, he said. He said there was also a danger that in the end the Russians would only be willing to negotiate with the United States because Europe had missed the right moment to initiate peace.

Orbán told the entrepreneurs that the war is the reason why the economic environment is not looking good, so their best chance is for Trump to return to power in the US presidential elections at the end of the year. He believes that

the reason why this war started in the first place was because Trump was not in power. We do not see the current US administration as having the potential to bring peace," he said.

Europe needs right-wing governance

He then turned to the upcoming European elections, which he said would be crucial, with sovereigntists on one side and globalists on the other. He said that those who are currently occupying the European institutions are "left-wing, ideologically minded people". What is needed instead is right-wing governance that is "more respectful of reality". The chances of this happening in the forthcoming EP elections are now there, but for a real breakthrough to come, he says, much more still needs to happen.

The changes in the European political landscape have not left our own alliance systems unscathed either, but according to the Prime Minister, "there is still much steam left in the V4", and it is not worth backing out of it. However, another system of alliances is also in the making, that of sovereignists, he said, and

this could lead to an Austrian-Hungarian-Serbian cooperation, which will also be of economic relevance.

Orbán said that he too has a fixation, which is the balance of profits, i.e. the balance between how much money is taken out of the country and how much comes back. Orbán said that he is fixating on this because he sees it as an important problem for Hungary as an open economy. Foreigners are taking EUR 4-6 billion out of the country annually which is not bad for us because this keeps Hungarians working, but it would be better if this money didn't leave.

Since exporting profits cannot be banned, because then the investments would not come,

the foreign investment of Hungarian companies must be brought up to match this, he said, so our best ones should be supported to invest abroad. According to him, big real estate companies, telecommunication firms, construction companies, and eventually the military industry will also be able to bring profits home.

These are needed to turn the situation around, to avoid us feeling like we are "the poor house", that we are being robbed and exploited.

Orbán also spoke about the difficulty of finding the right deficit reduction curve when they don't really intend to cut spending, but referred back to Finance Minister Mihály Varga's presentation on the importance of reducing the target deficit. EU finance ministers are due to make a decision in September on when everyone should be back within the Maastricht criteria, which is expected to be a four-year deadline, he said, adding that this means that Hungary is working with a one-year buffer, because we want to return to below 3% within three years.

Finally, the Prime Minister spoke about what Hungary is doing to prepare for the possibility that our plans might not work, for example if Trump does not return to the White House. In his view, it's not so much a matter of having a plan, but of having the right disposition. As an illustration, he quoted an anecdote about a Szekler commander who, upon hearing that they were surrounded from all sides, said: "This is the best news, because then we can attack from all sides".