Viktor Orbán: We are living in a decade of danger and war

The Hungarian Prime Minister gave his annual speech at Tusnádfürdő (Băile Tuşnad) for the first time since 2019. Viktor Orbán’s speech was marked by not only topics concerning current political events, but also the changing strategic direction of the future.

“I have a lot to say… We last met in 2019 so it is good to be together again,” said Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, opening his speech at the 31st Bálványos Free Summer University and Youth Camp at Tusványos. The Prime Minister added that since the last time they met, the world has changed quite a bit. “In 2019 we were part of a very optimistic and hopeful camp, but the decade that has now opened up before us is clearly going to be a decade of dangers, of uncertainty and wars,” he stated.

The Prime Minister mentioned three major shocks: coronavirus, war, and the prevention of another Cold War.

Viktor Orbán explained that the most important advice is modest and humility; with this in mind he asked listeners to accept his message. He said that looking at the facts, it seems the world is getting better and better yet we are experiencing just the opposite. The PM listed the many improved indicators: life expectancy is 80 years; child mortality has dropped to a third; malnutrition is at 15 percent; the proportion of people living in poverty is now only 15 percent; literacy rates are at 90 percent; the number of weekly working hours is 40 hours while leisure time has increased from 30 to 40 hours.

Tone of the news is getting ever darker

“And yet the general feeling is that the world is steadily deteriorating. The news, the tone of the news, is getting ever darker.” The Hungarian Prime Minister posed the question: “Is it possible that millions of people simply misunderstand what is happening to them?”

His answer to this phenomenon is that this discontent stems from a Western attitude to life, which is caused by the West losing its power, performance, authority, and capacity to act.

“What we are seeing today, however, is the decline of the Western world’s power and material resources,” he announced. While all other societies have become more modern such as China, India, Islamic states and other rivals which have adopted Western technology and financial systems – they are not concerned with adopting Western values.

“Nevertheless, the West wants to spread its own values, which is something that the rest of the world feels to be humiliating.” He continued to express that the rest of the world has realized they should modernize in order to be able to resist the West.

We have lost control over energy carriers

– declared Viktor Orbán. In 1990, the USA and Europe held 90 percent while today we only have 35 percent; we are in a similar situation regarding natural resources.

The West has lost the battle

“If we want to understand the state of the world, if we want to understand the state of the Westerner in the world, our starting point must be that much of the world’s energy carriers and energy resources lie outside Western civilization,” emphasized Viktor Orbán. He continued: in 2013, the Americans began fracking and they announced a new security policy doctrine.

America made no secret of the fact that it would use energy as a foreign policy weapon.

The Hungarian PM said that though Europe tried to defend the German-Russian energy axis, international politics are tearing this apart and we have not been able to switch to renewable energy sources. He mentioned the Brussels proposal to decrease Member State gas consumption and establish a shared system. According to the PM, “We Hungarians call this an “Einstand” [forcible confiscation by a stronger party], which is something we learned from The Paul Street Boys [the novel A Pál utcai fiúk]. This is what we can prepare ourselves for.”

The most important challenges

As Viktor Orbán said, the questions facing Hungarian society “are like the layers of a dobostorta [Hungarian layered sponge cake], stacked on top of each other… The first and most important challenge, Dear Friends, continues to be population, or demography. The fact is that there are still far more funerals than baptisms. Whether we like it or not, the peoples of the world can be divided into two groups: those that are capable of biologically maintaining their numbers; and those that are not, which is the group that we belong to… if there is no turnaround, sooner or later we will be displaced from Hungary, and we will be displaced from the Carpathian Basin.”

“The second challenge is migration… [which] has split Europe in two.

…it has split the West in two. One half is a world where European and non-European peoples live together. These countries are no longer nations: they are nothing more than a conglomeration of peoples… the post-Western world.” He explained that soon, in major cities, over 50 percent of citizens will have non-European roots. The PM noted that “the West has moved to

Central Europe in the intellectual sense… A battle is in progress between the two halves of Europe.” On one side is the goal to make us like them; though we hear less about migration, nothing has changed and Brussels still wants to force migrants on us according to the PM. This question was set aside due to the war.

Viktor Orbán believes it is important to understand that the West does not want to face the fact that they have lost everything – we however do not want to be forced into what they have done to themselves.

He also said: “The internationalist left employs a feint, an ideological ruse: the claim – their claim – that Europe by its very nature is populated by peoples of mixed race.” However, this is the exact thing separating the two halves of the West.

We do not want to become peoples of mixed-race

In response to the aforementioned trick of the left, Viktor Orbán affirmed that “we do not want to become peoples of mixed-race.”

Today the situation is that Islamic civilization, which is constantly moving towards Europe, has realized… that the route through Hungary is an unsuitable one along which to send its people up into Europe… those whom we do not want to let in will have to be stopped at our western borders – Schengen or no Schengen.

The Hungarian PM highlighted that the next issue among these layers is gender. Hungary has been brought to court over this matter as well.

... we do not want to tell them how they should live; we are just asking them to accept that in our country a father is a man and a mother is a woman, and that they leave our children alone. And we ask them to see to it that George Soros’s army also accepts this.

Viktor Orbán believes that the West’s lunacy will never enjoy a majority in our corner of the world.

Save what we can for the post-war period

“War… has shaken the Polish-Hungarian cooperation that has been the axis of V4 cooperation,” pointed out the Hungarian Prime Minister. He explained that while our goals align, this war still manages to strain our friendships. “We Hungarians see this war as a war between two Slavic peoples, and as one which we want to stay out of. But the Poles see it as a war in which they are also involved,” he explained.

“[We] must use our intellect to salvage everything we can from the Polish-Hungarian friendship and strategic alliance for the post-war period.”

He added that the Czech seem to prefer the post-Western world which also strains cooperation. After this, the Hungarian PM addressed the war. He said that the basis of every war is mothers losing their children and children losing their parents – that is why the Hungarian government does not want any Hungarian parents or children to get involved.

“There are countries that criticize us because they think that we are not sufficiently committed to the Ukrainians. But those countries are far away.”

Thus far, 86 Hungarians have died in the war. He explained that those criticizing us have not shed any blood, so we have the right to stand for peace as the only solution to this war and wartime inflation – and Hungary will continue to hold the belief that this is not our war.

Hungary is a member of NATO which is far stronger than Russia, thus Russia will not attack NATO. The PM believes that the Ukrainian slogan that the Russians will not stop at Ukraine is not realistic; rather, it is to get countries to stand alongside them. He said that we are in the dangerous situation of having to help Ukrainians in a way that Moscow does not sense NATO and the EU “have become formal belligerents.”

Sanctions are not destabilizing Moscow

“But it is very important to make a moral distinction between understanding something and accepting something,” stated the Prime Minister Viktor

Orbán in regard to the Russian-Ukrainian war. Westerners have ignored Russian security needs and now Russia is acting upon this threat with weapons.

If Donald Trump had been President of the USA and Angela Merkel the Chancellor of Germany, this war would not have broken out

– noted Viktor Orbán. He continued: sanctions are not destabilizing Moscow, rather Europe is in an economic and political crisis. “Historically the Americans have had the ability to pick out what they identify as an evil empire and to call on the world to stand on the right side of history” – and the Hungarian PM believes this war can bring an end to this advantage.

The decisive will win

“... the war is a prelude. It is the word of the strong that will be decisive. Hungary should not cherish the illusion that with our excellent advice we will be able to influence the events of the war,” underlined the Hungarian Prime Minister. “Nevertheless, in any debate I consider it a matter of honor and moral principle that we must try to state our position and try to persuade the West to develop a new strategy to replace empty reports of victory… the task of the European Union is not to stand alongside either the Russians or the Ukrainians, but to stand between Russia and Ukraine.”

“This should be the essence of a new strategy.”

“The Russians are speaking an old language” but that does not mean that what they say has no meaning explained Orbán. According to a recent conversation with Russian officials, “they will push forward in Ukraine until the front line is so far advanced that from there the weapons possessed by the Ukrainians will not be able to hit Russian territory.”

They are only interested in ensuring that they are not attacked from Ukraine’s direction as Europe is currently doing while also prolonging the war. There will be no Russian-Ukrainian peace talks

– summarized the PM, continuing to say that the war can only be ended with Russian-American peace talks and until this happens, there will be no peace. “We Europeans have squandered our chance to influence events…after 2014, when we left the Americans out of the first Minsk agreement...” Thus, we again will have to leave our security up to the USA and Russia.

From this perspective the threat that non-consensus foreign policy decisions in the EU poses is evident, that a simple majority can decide the fate of a Member State.

Forcing Member States into something they do not want through imperialism.

According to Viktor Orbán the belief that this is the only way for Europe to become a world political player, by these forced decisions, is a sleight of hand. The reason Europe cannot manage this is because they “cannot keep order in [their] own backyard.” It would be enough for Europe to be able to defend its own borders, he stated, also pointing out that Europe should not aim for a role as a world political player, but rather clearing up continental issues.

Those with energy sources benefit

“The fifth set of challenges we face relates to energy and the economy,” underlined Viktor Orbán. He believes those with energy sources benefit from the war.

The Russians will benefit: though they sell less energy, their revenue is much higher. The Chinese benefit as well as big American energy companies

– said the Hungarian Prime Minister adding that the EU is worse off. He confirmed that they will be able to preserve utility price reductions introduced by the state as average consumption will stay at the former lower price. In 2021 the Hungarian government paid out 296 billion forints, and if current prices remain then this would grow to seven times as much or 2,051 billion forints. He affirmed that the Hungarian economy would not survive this and it must be resolved.

That is why we have decided to protect the price up to the average consumption level, but above that a market price will apply. This is also why we have rescheduled every type of non-energy investment. Those which have not yet been started will not start, while those which have been started as public investments will be completed, because nothing can be left in an unfinished state…. If we can shift consumption from gas to other sources, such as electricity or biomass – the modern term for wood – then the burden that is weighing us down will be reduced.

He mentioned the recession that we also face. The economy will not perform as well compared to previous years and this will impact all of Europe. He also said that the Hungarian forint automatically weakens whenever the dollar strengthens; he posed the question whether next year’s economic performance will be worse than the previous years.

According to the budget’s predictions no, but in certain parts of Europe yes – potentially causing political destabilization.

We are in need of different plans for the first two and second two years of these global changes. The PM stated: “here the key term is “staying out”... Hungary will only succeed in maintaining its success if we stay out of the war, if we stay out of migration, if we stay out of gender lunacy… [and] want to impose it on us…”

New agreements

Viktor Orbán established that new agreements must be made with the European Union, the Russians, the Chinese, and the USA so that by 2024 we can return to a growing economy. He highlighted that the most important deadline is 2030; according to analyses, that is when the West’s issues will accumulate.

“There will be a very serious crisis in the United States… the emergence of all the problems of the eurozone: South in debt and the North having to finance it”

– asserted the Hungarian PM. “...there will be a new power dynamic within the EU, because by that time the Central Europeans… will be net contributors… [So,] around the year 2030 we will have to be in top form.”

What are our opportunities?

At the end of his speech, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán discussed the Hungarian advantages and opportunities. He explained that we have proper border defense, a family-based society, and we are developing our military. If we take advantage of the technology transformation and foreign capital inflows, we can win.

Hungary is a transit economy; if the world separates into blocs, then we will be on the edge, on the periphery, a kind of gateway. Thus, Hungary must bloc any attempts at blocs.

According to the Hungarian PM, our advantages are political stability, the two-thirds majority. However, we must take care to ensure that the future generations coming ahead of this will have the same values. Other Hungarian advantages include that Hungary “still has its national conception, its sphere of national sentiment, its culture, and a language capable of describing a complete Hungarian world.”

The tenth advantage listed by the PM was Hungarian ambition in terms of society, the nation, and Europe.

“...in order to preserve our national ambitions, we must show solidarity… The motherland must stand together, and Transylvania and the other areas in the Carpathian Basin inhabited by Hungarians must stand together.

“... we have always given more to the world than we have received from it, that more has been taken from us than given to us… we are more industrious and more talented than the position we now find ourselves in and the way in which we live, and the fact that the world owes us something – and that we want to, and will, call in that debt. This is our strongest ambition,” said the Prime Minister, concluding his speech.

Photo: Zsolt Németh, Viktor Orbán, László Tőkés (Photo: Prime Minister's Press Office)