Most recently, the Austrian chancellor said that the use of existing financial funds should be a priority for the European Commission before increasing the amount of money to be paid in.Continue reading
On Thursday and Friday, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán attends a summit of EU leaders in Brussels, where the issues to be discussed include migration and the EU budget. On Friday morning, the Prime Minister spoke to Radio Kossuth about the summit’s agenda so far and the Hungarian government’s position, reports Hirado.hu.
“Yesterday the topic was migration, and today we will be discussing the budget,” Viktor Orbán said on the radio. He recalled that Member States would have to pay billions of euros to replenish the seven-year budget, because halfway through the period the money has already run out.
He added that the money is intended to be used, among other things, to give 50 billion euros to Ukraine, but pointed out that the European Union has already given 70 billion euros for this purpose over the past year and a half, and it is not known what this money has been used for. It is also unclear who will control how it is spent, he said.
The second important element of the budget proposal is that the EU wants to make all Member States pay the increased interest burden on the loan – of which the Poles and Hungarians did not receive a penny – that the EU has taken out. The third major amount is to be asked for to facilitate the arrival of migrants in Europe, Orbán emphasized.
Meanwhile, they want the government to abolish the utility bill cuts in order to have a few billion euros left over to increase salaries in Brussels,
the Prime Minister added. So Hungarians should pay the price by paying more for their overheads, he said, arguing that the whole thing is completely absurd.
On Friday, Orbán said that
the European Commission must answer the question of where the money has gone and who is responsible for bringing the European Union to the brink of financial bankruptcy in two and a half to three years.
He added that as is the way in Brussels, they will try to kick the matter of increasing the contributions forward.
Asked whether EU financial support for Ukraine would bring peace faster, the Prime Minister said: “we are already at the limits of our capacity, that is what this debate is about,” adding that there is no money in the EU budget.
“Where is the Hungarian money? Where is the Polish money? I fear that they have given it to Ukraine,”
the Prime Minister stated.
He pointed out that the EU was losing competitiveness and there were huge economic problems. The EU is running out of money, which is why they want to borrow more and more, and then use that money for the “wrong” purposes, which is driving Member States into a debt trap, he noted.
Commenting on Thursday night’s debate, the Prime Minister said it was “a fight for freedom, not a rebellion.” He recalled that the proposal on the migrant quota system was pushed through the Council of Interior Ministers in a coup-like manner, which was strongly opposed by Poles and Hungarians. He said that rules had been agreed on that Hungary should take in at least 10,000 migrants. In Orbán’s words, Hungary would be obliged to build migrant ghettos. On this topic, he pointed out that he had seen migrants marching across Europe, adding that they would not become workers in Germany.
Regarding migration, Orbán emphasized that it was not a question of “bringing trouble to Europe,” but of bringing help to where it was needed. He stressed that Hungary is trying to help those states that are in need before the migration pressure starts and becomes difficult to stop.
Featured photo via MTI/Miniszterelnöki Sajtóiroda/Fischer Zoltán
