“We arrived here cutting through Romanian troops, but we would prefer to see them as a reception committee,” Viktor Orban said Saturday morning in his traditional speech at the Balvanyos Free Summer University and Student Camp in Baile Tusnad (Tusnadfurdo), Romania. The PM added that Romanian Orthodoxy is also needed in the ongoing struggle to protect Christianity. “The Romanian foreign ministry came to my aid and told me what I should not talk about. They advised us not to talk about things that might offend Romanian sensitivities,” he said, such as collective minority rights, but PM Orban indicated that these exist and are due to Hungarians.
They write that we should not talk about non-existent administrative units in Romania. I think they were thinking of Transylvania and Szeklerland, but we never claimed that these were territorial units of Romania.
He did note that there are topics he was allowed to talk about, such as Western values, provided he didn’t speak of them in a negative way. “Today, Western values mean three things: migration, LGBTQ and war. They don’t need to be portrayed in a negative light because they are bad in and of themselves,” he added.
Dangerous situation in world politics
The prime minister emphasized that we are living in a particularly dangerous period in the history of mankind, these are the years of great change. They affect every point and country on Earth. Therefore, if we want to say something valid about Hungary and Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin, it is best to talk about the world first. The balance of power in the world has shifted, and we are now suffering the serious consequences of this. After the Second World War, there was a balance of power for eighty years. “For us Hungarians, this consisted of two parts,” he said.
"In the first 45 years, the Anglo-Saxons handed us over to the Soviet communists – then they weren’t as finicky about the Russians as they are now – and in the next 33 years we lived freely, without military occupation and communists. And although this was a big change, the balance of the world was not disrupted, because we managed to phase the Soviet Union out of history without a war,"
PM Orban explained, continuing, “But now China has shifted the balance of the world. This is an old fear of the Western world.” He also recalled Napoleon’s words:
let China sleep, because when it wakes up, it will shake the world
There has never been such a rapid and tectonic change in the global balance as we are living in today. China is rising differently from how the US did because the US came to be while China has been and is. In fact, we are talking about the return of China - a 5000-year-old civilization of 1.4 billion people - which has become a production powerhouse and has overtaken or is in the process of overtaking the United States.
"What happened was that China covered the three-hundred-year journey of the Western industrial revolution and the global information revolution in thirty years,"
bringing hundreds of millions of people out of poverty he added.
Two suns in the sky
The premier noted that the problem is that the gold medal is going to an other recipient. After the Civil War, the United States developed to be the number one country, and whenever this position was challenged, whether by the USSR or the EU, the US always refuted it. “For a few decades, the EU had plans to develop the euro on par with the dollar,” he explained, adding that the United States successfully repelled the EU’s attempt to come along side it.
In 2010, both the US and the EU contributed 22-23 per cent to world production, while today the EU contributes only 17 and the US 25 per cent
“The higher your GDP, the greater your influence in the international struggle,”
he noted, pointing out that the dominance of the US is constantly weakening and that processes today favor Asia.
“Asia and China stand before us in full superpower attire, they have self-respect and a long-term plan. They want to end the century of humiliation. They want to regain dominance over Asia. And the universal values of the US are laughed at by the Chinese,” he said. Every day we are moving closer to a clash. We are in a dangerous situation in world politics because the number one power sees itself sliding back into second place, he added.
However, the good news is that war is not inevitable. Instead of the current balance of the world, a new balance must be found. Something unprecedented should be done: the big powers should accept that there are two suns in the sky,
Viktor Orban stated.
From this assessment of the situation, we must understand that a new balance will not be achieved overnight, it will take a generation, he said. So not just we, but our children will also live their lives in these times. We Hungarians have to live in this spirit of the times and shape our plans for the nation accordingly, he stressed.
EU feels hemmed in
Assessing the European Union, PM Orban said that people have the feeling that the EU is plagued by anxiety and feels hemmed in. It is a rich and weak bloc that sees a world in revolt, with millions of people heading for Europe.
As he said, there had been a Latin American summit in Brussels where the most common phrases in the vocabulary of Latin American leaders were the extermination of indigenous peoples, the slave trade, reparative justice. This is the way they think. No wonder the EU feels trapped.
If we look at the International Monetary Fund’s list of countries by GDP, we see that Britain, Italy and France are projected to fall out of the top ten by 2030 and Germany, now fourth, will have dropped to tenth. The EU is like an aging boxing champion, showing off his medals but no longer willing to get back in the ring. The result is isolation in an economic, political and cultural ghetto, he said.
The result is isolation in an economic, political and cultural ghetto,"
he said.
Hungarophobia from Ukraine
Big European companies do not want to leave Russia, Viktor Orban said. He pointed out that 70 percent of energy companies are still present in Russia and that Western companies have paid $3.5 billion into the Russian budget. "The attack launched by Ukraine against OTP Bank is mere Hungarophobia," he stressed. Brexit has upset the balance between federalists and sovereignists in the EU, he noted. "Only the Poles and the Hungarians are holding out, but there is a chance for new allies," he said. The prime minister recalled:
the federalists had openly said they wanted a change of government in Hungary and were financing the opposition with all the means of political corruption.
"If you read the constitutions of European countries, you will see that the 'I' is at the center of those documents, while the 'we' is at the center of the Hungarian constitution," Mr Orban said. Peace, family, justice and freedom cannot be achieved alone, he said. The common things in the life of the individual are expressed in terms of attachment, while liberal constitutions are not written on the basis of attachment but detachment, he stressed. "We made the right decision when we created the Hungarian, national, Christian constitution in 2011," the prime minister said, adding that the migration crisis and the LGBTQ campaign could not be fought back on liberal grounds.
Rejected Christian heritage and LGBTQ campaign
At the core of the conflicts between the EU and our country lies our fundamental law, PM Orban said. The EU is rejecting our Christian heritage, it is carrying out population swaps and it is waging an LGBTQ campaign against family-friendly nations. The prime minister said that Europe has created its own political class which is no longer accountable, no longer Christian or democratic in its beliefs.
He also stressed that "we do not want everyone to have the same faith, the same family life or the same holidays.
But we do insist that we have a common home, a common language, a common culture and a common public sphere that must be protected at all costs. So we will not compromise, we will not back down, we will insist on our rights. We will not give in to political or economic blackmail,
he said.
All resources must be mobilized for family policy
Talking about the economic foundations of the new era, he said that they have been under construction for 13 years and are already performing well enough. The output of the Hungarian economy has tripled in 13 years, from €71 billion to €210 billion, he said.
The goal is to have a GDP of €424 billion by 2030.
As regards the competitiveness of the Hungarian economy, we have doubled it in 13 years. In 2010 the employment rate was 62 percent, today it is 77 percent, and by 2030 we want to increase it to 85 per cent. Last year, 11 of our universities were among the best in the world. As for family support, the fertility rate has risen from 1.2 to 1.5.
But for our population not to decline, the ratio should be 2.1. We are still in trouble, so all resources must be mobilized for family policy.
the prime minister stressed.
The national defense sector is also beginning to recover, the premier said . There will soon be an effective army, warriors instead of uniformed employees, and even a national defense industry is taking shape. Hungary is progressing well with its national reunification program with a target date of 2030: since 2010, the resources sent across the border have increased tenfold, and now, at a time when we are facing all sorts of difficulties, education funding is being increased five-fold, by five hundred percent.
Finally, PM Orban congratulated those who had taken part in the Minority Safepack and the European Citizens' Initiative for National Regions, that had collected more than one million signatures each.
He said that the continent had collided with two meteors in three years, the first being Covid in 2020, which we dodged, but the war of 2022 diverted us from our course. "The government is fighting to get us back on course, which will take us to 2030. The earliest we can get back on track is around July 2024," the premier predicted.
The hard part is over and that inflation could be in single digits by the end of the year, the prime minister said.
If all goes well, he will be able to talk about the plans for 2030-2040 at the 2024 camp in Baile Tusnad, he added.
Orban concluded his speech by saying that "we must keep our wits about us when it comes to great world affairs, we must build connections in the world economy, we must fight in EU disputes, we must persevere in intellectual matters, and we must remain steadfast in national unification.”
We wrote earlier: Viktor Orban has made speeches in Baile Tusnad since 1998
Prime Minister Viktor Orban is to deliver a speech in Baile Tusnad at 9:30 on Saturday, where he is expected to share his thoughts on governance and strategic issues of public interest.
This year, the premier is expected to answer questions such as how long the conflict between Russia and Ukraine can last and whether there will ever be peace in the world again. Daniel Deak, senior analyst at the XXI Century Institute, says Viktor Orban is likely to outline the government's priorities during the election campaign, but migration, war and security will also feature prominently in the speech.
As in previous years, the assessment could also serve as a compass for voters.
