Brussels Piles Failure to Failure, Warns Viktor Orbán in EU Presidency Summary

Viktor Orbán during his address.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has given his much anticipated speech summing up the results of the Hungarian EU Presidency in Budapest that concluded with December 31. At the event organized by the XXI. Century Institute, he spoke about his hopes for reforming the EU with the help of the Patriots for Europe alliance, and blasted bureaucrats for systemic corruption and hypocrisy.

In his address the Prime Minister thanked the team who have worked for the success of the Hungarian Presidency, led by Minister János Bóka. He also had a few chosen words for those who worked against the success of the Hungarian Presidency, especially for members of the Hungarian opposition, who in his view worked against Hungarians on behalf of Brussels: “may they be damned to the deepest pit of hell”, he said.

He called the Hungarian EU Presidency the “beginning of a new era”. This semester will go down in the history books as the period in which Donald Trump and the European patriots began to transform the Western world, the prime minister said. He stressed that it is now generally accepted that we are living in the years of a change of world order, the years of the rise of the East, of Asia. The world order as we have known it, the world order established and dominated by the West, and more specifically by the Anglo-Saxons, has come to an end.

Speaking about the world economy, he pointed out that in China there is now a shift towards innovative high-tech industries with high added value, such as electromobility, space, telecommunications and artificial intelligence. And this is also the essence of Donald Trump’s new US economic policy. All the while Western liberals have invented and built woke capitalism over the past decades. Western liberal politicians have substituted competitiveness and performance for diversity and propaganda. They have put competition and financial returns ahead of being on the right side of history, the ones working for the right order in the world. In doing so, they have eliminated economic growth, sent inflation skyrocketing, and are closing their factories. Wages are falling at an alarming rate, they are bringing their whole economic system crashing down. Yet they are still convinced that they are morally above the rest of the world, Mr. Orbán underlined.

He said: ‘A telling example of this is the green transition and the green economy, which is currently destroying European industry. This is woke capitalism. But the good news is that America has woken up, Mr. Orbán stressed. They have realized that if this goes on, the whole world, but certainly China, will march past them, and they will be at most a market for super-modern products made elsewhere. If this goes on, they will no longer write the future. In the United States they decided to change course. Viktor Orbán stressed that this is what Donald Trump’s victory and the new US economic policy is all about.

He continued by saying that the Western liberal model of state organization, what they call liberal democracy, has failed. It has collapsed under its own weight, or rather the weight of its own failures. An over-bureaucratized state system, an over-regulated economy, a state incapable of action. A state that ultimately no longer works for its citizens, but against them. This is what Americans have rebelled against. The American rebellion legitimises competition between different modes of state organization.

Here we have the scandal of the American vs. the Brussels systems, starting tomorrow,

he pointed out, hinting at the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

Only a center of power where a common identity is the basis of public life can be successful. History, language, religion are all things that liberal democracy has written off, perhaps even looked down upon and deemed obsolete, Viktor Orbán continued. For six months we have seen at close quarters what is going on in Brussels. Brussels seems to be uninterested in issues that will determine the future. They are unconcerned with the changes in world politics and their consequences for us. The European Union is not only lagging behind in the race, but has not even started to prepare for the race, Mr. Orbán said.

The European Union wants war, it does not want border protection, it wants migrants. It does not want to protect families, it wants to protect genders, it does not want affordable energy, it wants a green policy.

– the prime minister said.

If a war is fought on the European continent, we all stand to lose. It is not only Ukraine that has gone to war, but with them all the European economies. Prices are sky-high, our money is being eaten up by the Ukrainian front, sanctions have knocked out our companies, and energy prices are killing off European businesses that were competitive before the war.

The Hungarian Presidency has raised the banner of peace, opened the door to a ceasefire and peace talks, opened dialogue with the warring parties and put pressure on European leaders to restart diplomacy and communication, continued his speech the Prime Minister. We must keep the diplomatic channels of negotiation open. We have done so, even if we could only do so on a national basis, because the majority of EU Member States still opposed peace, he said.

We have persevered and today Hungarians are proud to hand over the baton of peace to the new US administration. Good intentions, courage, diplomatic skill and Christian duty are all very well, but in the end peace requires strength.

– the Prime Minister explained.

The question is, where is Hungary in this? – asked Viktor Orbán. Like the greats, we Hungarians are working to become the winners in the new world order that is taking shape and promises to last. We have already modernized the basic structure of our economy in the early 2010s. We have shifted the focus of taxation from labor to consumption, with low taxes, a million new jobs, full employment, an environment conducive to investment and enterprise, and steady wage growth, except for one year, the year of war sanctions.

We put families at the heart of the economy and society, then we integrated universities into the economic system, we put research and innovation on a new footing, and finally we started to build the most advanced new industries in Hungary.

In 2010, we have drafted a new constitution and introduced a new way of organizing the state, based on sovereignty, based on Christian traditions, and the protection of the family. “As they say about us in America, we were Trump before Trump”, joked Mr. Orbán. We are at the forefront, we are not followers as we have been for centuries, we are pioneers, we are model-makers, we are brave experimenters. That is why we are icons to Western conservatives and why we are hated by Western liberals. And it is precisely our struggles over the past 15 years that now give Hungary the opportunity for a new economic policy – underlined the Prime Minister.

The Liberals see the Hungarian doctrine of economic neutrality as more of a communication or a political gimmick. Yet economic neutrality is the idea and the political orientation that defines Hungary’s place and path in the international arena. A place and a path that differs from, even contradicts, Brussels’ expectations. It marks out Hungary’s policy of a separate path, emphasized the Prime Minister.

The European Union has become isolated through the actions of its present leaders, and the fact that they call us isolated should not deceive us.

We are up against an old communist trick, Viktor Orbán stressed. They always accuse their opponents of what they are doing. The truth is that no other continent is so isolated from all the major players in the new world order. Europe has isolated itself even from the new American leadership.

European liberals have painted Donald Trump as a demon, and that is a slur that not only we Europeans remember, but also the new US administration will. The EU has isolated itself from China by calling one of the world’s economic superpowers a systemic rival and launching a tariff war against it. The Union has also isolated itself from Russia. European leaders have claimed the Russia-Ukraine war as their own, and have rejected cheap Russian energy without replacing it. And the EU has also isolated itself from the continent of the future, Africa – he underlined.

According to the Prime Minister, they have made cooperation conditional on LGBTQ and gender politics, which are completely alien to the region, and have thus made it impossible to build a relationship based on trust. Meanwhile, during the Hungarian Presidency, we Hungarians have continued to build cooperation with the Republican President, who has won a landslide victory, we have maintained a channel of communication and cooperation with Russia that guarantees reasonable energy security, almost half of Chinese high-tech investment in Europe comes to Hungary, and Hungarian water and agricultural expertise is welcomed everywhere in Africa. If this continues, the EU will be the absolute loser in the new world order.

While EU leaders are demanding a divestment from Russian energy, more liquefied natural gas of Russian origin than ever before is arriving in Western Europe. Large EU companies have been buying their own Russian oil via some Asian mediators. We Hungarians, unlike Brussels, have a well-defined strategy for the coming world era, he said.

The European Union is sick, said Viktor Orbán. The symptoms are obvious: the EU is not capable of guaranteeing peace and security in Europe. The EU is also unable to guarantee Europe’s prosperity, and cannot stop illegal migration either, nor can Brussels give a perspective to European agriculture either. However, debate, discussion and deliberation will not be enough in the future. It is a waste of words and time, because policy cannot be built on the insight of Brussels bureaucrats.

We knew this, and the experience of the Presidency confirmed it: they are impossible to convince”.

– The Prime Minister explained.

The EU is failing in one initiative after another, yet at the same time the EU institutions are being strengthened and reinforced through the acquisition of more and more powers, he said. Instead of introspection, Brussels responded to the failure with new centralized policies and the removal of further Member State competences. At the same time, Brussels is openly abusing its power, tying the Member States to legal and financial constraints – he said.

The question now is how we Hungarians should react to this situation when we see it, asked the Prime Minister. How do we heal, how can we heal the EU, which has set itself the goal of federalization and the abolition of national sovereignty? In short, change is needed, and this change can be achieved by political means from outside and through conflicts with Brussels, Hungary has become the official opposition to the system in Brussels. The EU institutions are held captive to an oligarchy that is left-liberal, and is guided by liberal transatlantic elites. It is a power system that is not European, but global. It is not a democracy, it is an oligarchy, and it is not based on the sovereignty of nation states, it is federal instead. Even a blind man can see that we are facing a progressive liberal united front, funded by George Soros – the Prime Minister pointed out.

They are attacking us because we are sovereigntists and even patriots. We are under attack because we demand that the rule of law should also apply to Brussels. We are under attack because we demand that the fight against corruption should also apply to Brussels. Instead, European bureaucrats threaten their political opponents with fines, sanctions and the loss of voting rights. “Let us be under no illusion, there will always be those among us who are frightened and believe there is a lesser evil. If we do not end this spiral of blackmail now, it will only get worse,” Viktor Orbán concluded.

Featured Image: MTI/Máthé Zoltán