"The government meeting kicked off on Wednesday evening and we will close it at noon on Friday," Viktor Orban said on Kossuth Radio's Good Morning, Hungary programme. In addition to current affairs, so-called big issues are also being discussed, PM Orban said, speaking in a local studio halfway through the three-day off-site cabinet meeting held in Sopronbanfalva.
"Such issues include energy supply, technological developments in agriculture, defence and demographic processes, and decisions on supporting families", he said. As he put it, Hungarians face a different future if there is war. He highlighted that the West still wants war, which was confirmed at the NATO summit, and that that there is hardly any talk about peace, so the war will not end and sanctions will not be lifted in the foreseeable future.
"Without them, we could return to a normal economic growth path," he said. He pointed out that
the government has a plan to bring inflation down to single digits by the end of the year, despite the war and the sanctions.
Brussels calls for building migrant ghettos
Speaking about migration, the Hungarian premier said that at a meeting in Brussels this week the majority decided to introduce a mandatory migrant quota, which would imply the admission of tens of thousands of migrants to Hungary every year, and would require member states to build migrant ghettos.
At yesterday's cabinet meeting, we reviewed the political and legal options available to prevent Brussels from implementing its plan, he added.
There is a so-called economic policy system or governance. Every year proposals are made as to what member states should do to change their economies. Brussels has a proposal again this year that would lead to the phasing out of the utility price cut scheme, he said, adding that at yesterday's cabinet meeting, they also discussed how they could prevent this. PM Orban also touched on the new waste management system. The new system was also on the agenda, as its introduction would adversely affect winegrowers, and they were now trying to find a solution to this.
"The Ukrainian's style of communication is certainly unusual. If you're in trouble and you ask for help, behave accordingly," PM Orban said in response to the comment that after the NATO summit, the UK defence minister had criticised Ukraine's president, saying he could be more grateful. The Hungarian prime minister added that he understands that the Ukrainians are in great trouble, but it is important not to adopt the Ukrainian standpoint as our own, because that would mean drifting into war, which would mean a world war.
Why do Americans not want the war to end?
"The situation remains extremely dangerous," PM Orban said, stressing that hundreds, sometimes thousands of people are killed every day in a country neighboring Hungary. "We must be alert," he emphasized. The premier agreed with Ukrainian President Zelensky’s assessment that the US could put and end to the war in five minutes. If the Americans wanted the war to end, it would be over tomorrow, PM Orban opined. “At the NATO summit, we still did not receive an answer to the question as to why the US doesn’t want that,” the prime minister said.
Talking about the Hungarian inflation, he said that it can decrease to single digits one or even one a half months before December.
Migration: the Hungarian model works
Viktor Orban said that last year, some 330 thousand migrants were stopped at EU borders, 270 thousand of them at the Hungarian border. The prime minister did not rule out the fact that “the colleagues in Brussels” may have good ideas in certain questions, but added that
we have to rely on our own experience regarding migration.
We must always recall how violent and armed migrants clashed with Hungarian border guards at Roszke, how they marched through the country in their hundreds of thousands, how they occupied Budapest railway stations, so we have experience, we have to work from that. Experience tells us that we must say no to migration, the prime minister said. There is only one solution to migration, he added: those waiting for a decision on their asylum applications must remain outside the EU's borders. Hungary had built its own model on the issue, which is why there are no migrants in Hungary, he added.
Regarding the Hungarian migration model, the premier said that Brussels does not believe that this is the right model, and therefore does not want to adopt it. “The Hungarian people would in three minutes throw out a government that behaved like Western governments”, he said. “As long as there is a national government in Hungary, there will be no migrant ghettos in the country, and that it took more than enough work to dismantle the refugee camps back in the day,” he added.
Orban on the Hungarian left: we are dealing with mercenaries
Opposition demands should not be conceded, he said. It turns out that the opposition is being paid in dollars, euros and pounds, and whoever pays the piper calls the tune. The first front-line in the fight against migrants is in the Hungarian parliament, PM Orban added, since
the left would dismantle the border fence and create migrant ghettos in Hungary.
These people are not acting in the interests of the Hungarian people, but in the interests of their foreign clients, he said, referring to the left's funding scandal. The prime minister said that those who call it corruption are not far from the truth, and that corruption is a crime everywhere. He himself sees it as a sovereignty issue.
The current rules are not clear, it is a criminal offense also under the current legislation, but the rules certainly need to be clarified. Anyone who sells out Hungary's sovereignty, who accepts money, commits a crime, the premier said.
Cover photo: Viktor Orban (Source: Viktor Orban's Facebook page)
