Viktor Orban posted on his TikTok page a video clip with excerpts from the interview he gave on Kossuth Radio (MR1) two days ago, in which he explained how Brussels-supported grain shipments from Ukraine are ruining Hungarian farmers.
"The EU imposes extremely bureaucratic and strict rules on European farmers prescribing how they can farm, what chemicals they can and cannot use, whether they can use genetically modified seeds, what environmental aspects of farming they have to take into account and how much fertilizer they can use. These regulations that often go beyond what is reasonable reduce productivity.
No such rules exist in Ukraine,"
the PM began his explanation.
Few countries produce more than they consume, but Hungary is one of them.
Mr Orban pointed out that "when someone has to produce wheat while adhering to major restrictions and the other has no such constraints, the latter enjoys a huge competitive advantage: that farmer can produce cheaper and can sell his crop at a profit.
If that farmer can sell his product cheaper than the Hungarian farmer, then he will acquire the Hungarian farmer's market,"
the premier said.
"Today we are suffering from this, and it is a very serious problem for Hungary. Hungarian farmers had been able to sell part of their produce in Europe. There are 6 or 7 countries on the continent that produce more food than they consume, and Hungary is one of them. Our farmers produced, sold it on the European markets, getting pretty good money for it, and the next year they produced again with the money they received. Now that cheap Ukrainian grain has entered the Western European market, Western European buyers are buying the cheaper product," PM Orban said.
"The Hungarian grain is no longer being bought and remains in the warehouses. We are exerting great efforts to find a way to place these stocks until next year's harvest so that our farmers don't go bankrupt in the interim.
This is the essence of the problem, and Brussels is turning a deaf ear to it,"
the PM concluded.
