Orbán: the Government Will Not Budge on Children’s Education or Migration

During his customary Friday interview on public broadcaster Radio Kossuth, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that we will look back on 2022 as the year when we entered the era of dangers. We must respond actively to threats, as we did in 2020 and last year, he added.

In his assessment, the pandemic was followed by armed conflict in Ukraine, then an energy crisis, sanctions, inflation, while migration pressures are increasing, the war seems to be dragging on and getting bloodier. The Prime Minister said that people need to be clear in their own minds about how they relate to these threats. One option is to turn defensive, curling up like a hedgehog. Some European leaders are like this, but this kind of attitude is paralyzing, he claimed.

We must respond actively to threats, as we did in 2020 and last year, he maintained,

added Viktor Orbán.

He further stressed that we are all having to pay more because of punitive energy prices, but the government has not responded by simply imposing these on people, but by creating the energy protection fund to help protect families. This is the best example of active protection. Thanks to this, families have saved 181,000 forints (EUR 450) a month, which they do not have in their hands, but which nobody has come to take away from them either – the Prime Minister stressed.

Speaking about the European debates surrounding the sanctions, the Prime Minister said that he is waiting for someone to come along who will finally admit that we have made a mistake, in order to bring down energy prices and halve inflation. Viktor Orbán added:

Hungary is leading the way in courage, but our strength is not enough to turn European politics around.

We are only trying to put the brakes on the process, so in the next period, without courage and strength, this misfortune will continue in “Euroland”.

In Hungary, the system of energy security provides each family with the equivalent of €450 a month, the Prime Minister said. He stressed that if this were to be extended to families in Belgium, Spain and France, it would be an impossible mission, as it would be “very expensive”. He continued that these funds must be collected in the form of corporate extra profits via windfall taxes, and that big companies must understand that this is only a temporary measure.

On threats from the European Commission to block the Erasmus+ student exchange funds the PM said that students should continue to “prepare as they have been preparing before”, they will not suffer any damage. This is an investment by the nation, “it is in the national interest to have bright students who bring knowledge home from abroad”, the prime minister said. He also said that it was incomprehensible to him that

there were people in Brussels who wanted to take revenge on other people’s children as a way of settling a dispute.

Viktor Orbán stressed that Brussels has one goal: they want a change of government in Hungary. Brussels has an idea about migration or, for example, about how to educate our children. And the Hungarian government will not budge on these issues. In his view, this is what politicians in Brussels were working on before the elections, which is why the left-wing opposition coalition received money from abroad. But Hungarian voters have decided otherwise. Brussels still had to do something about the conservative government in Budapest, and now it is trying to punish young Hungarians. The Prime Minister said that this was the reason for the current Erasmus program being stopped.

We are not sinners, we are actively defending ourselves,

Orbán Viktor said. Its opponents accuse the government of many things, but never of laziness, and his team will work to prevent a decline in economic performance, he pledged. The Hungarian government must start the year with ambitious targets, one of which is to bring inflation down to single digits. The second is not to sink into recession and to achieve economic growth in 2023. 2022 was an election year, yet we managed to reduce the budget deficit and achieve economic growth, he concluded.

Via Hirado.hu. Featured Photo: Miniszterelnöki Sajtóiroda/Fischer Zoltán