Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said the EU is now in a crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine and warned the bloc is in danger as the majority of MEPs are in favour of continuing Ukraine’s war with Russia, GB News reported.
Speaking on local Hungarian radio Civilek Info on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Hungary’s accession to the EU, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that when Budapest joined the EU in 2004, the EU accounted for more than 20 per cent of global output, a figure has now fallen significantly:
“We joined the union because Europe meant peace and prosperity. Now we are in an economic crisis. The Europe we joined created more than twenty per cent of the world’s economic power. Now we have moved back from there, our competitors have all overtaken us, and that was not what we were hoping for. And there was also no talk of European leaders dragging the continent into war instead of peace.”
He went on to say that a massive European war is not a fantasy, and Poles are already saying that the war has no diplomatic solution. The Prime Minister recalled that in 1999 it was possible to keep Hungary from going to war in the South Slavic conflict against the Serbs, which would have destroyed Serb-Hungarian relations and the fate of Hungarians in Vojvodina. He then recalled that in the twentieth century the country was twice dragged into a war that decided the fate of the country.
“Europe is playing with fire; we are on the frontier between peace and war. (…) Hungarians don’t simply want peace, Hungarians have an instinct for peace because of their experiences during the World War and because of the economic connections,” Orbán added.
Orbán said the impact of financing the war in Ukraine had damaged the economies of many EU countries, citing Germany as an example. He said Berlin had been “ruined” by the Russia-Ukraine war as Germans are paying twice as much for energy as they did before the conflict when they imported gas from Russia. The German market is very important for Hungary because the whole point of Hungary’s EU membership is that the country has unlimited access to the markets of richer countries. But if those countries go into crisis, Hungary will be affected as well, according to the Prime Minister.
“Hungary is interested in the German economy soaring and becoming a driving force. But this is not the case today, as we have to achieve economic growth in such a way that our most important sales market – the Western European one – is unfortunately in crisis, growing to a lesser extent than the Hungarian one.”
Orbán now believes that the only solution to solve the current economic problems is to engage with China and Africa. Therefore, he will discuss Hungary’s participation in in the Belt and Road Initiative, which includes further railway modernisation projects as well as funding for a new oil pipeline connecting it to Serbia, at an upcoming meeting with the Chinese leader.
“This is where we have to be smart. It is not by chance that the Chinese president is coming to Hungary, it is not by chance that we have increased our activity in Central Asia and increased our economic relations with Africa as well. In the current situation, the capacity for action of the Hungarian economy must be expanded to a greater extent than we were used to in the past.”
It was reported last month that Orbán wants to join forces with Marine Le Pen and George Meloni in a bid to gain leverage in the European Parliament. The decision was made ahead of the upcoming June elections, and Orbán, along with former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, hope the new right-wing alliance will help them gain more influence in the next parliamentary term.
Orbán’s party, Fidesz, is considering which faction to join after they left the centre-right European People’s Party in 2021. Options include the national-conservative European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group and the far-right Identity and Democracy (ID). However, an alternative option would be to form a new group.
