Hungary Is Freer than Western European Countries, Says Minister

Today Hungary is significantly freer than Western European countries, and media relations are clear evidence of this, the Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office stressed at the conference entitled Wars of Justice II in Budapest on Monday.

Gergely Gulyás, speaking at the event organized by the Center for Fundamental Rights and the Hungarian National Media Association, stressed that in Hungary, very different values are represented in the mainstream press, from the radical far left to the radical right. Everyone has a forum, everyone can be found, and everyone has the opportunity to participate in the debates of Hungarian public life.
That is why, he says,

the debates are fuller and freer than in Western Europe, where the press, which used to call itself conservative, has given up its positions on all important issues.

Gergely Gulyás said that in Hungary, freedom of the press cannot be questioned, everyone can write according to their own convictions, and no one can be stigmatized for an opinion.
According to the minister, the threat of the 21st century is that left-liberal topics will become exclusive, and those who do not accept them cannot be part of politics. In this respect, there is a serious resistance in Central Europe, he said, adding that Central Europe, and Hungary in particular, has not given up the objective of maintaining normality in the future.
Gulyás said there is no doubt that social changes are taking place, which do not favor the conservative world in Western Europe. However, the question is whether the principles and foundations that bind society together and are able to operate in the long term, which everyone accepts as correct and indisputable, will remain in society.

“We see that Western European legislation, the legislation of the Western Member States of the European Union, has generally gone beyond these issues. They did not simply lowered the bar, they have lowered the bar once and for all,” he said, adding:

In most countries of Western Europe, the right-wing parties are no longer willing to engage in debates on the issues that Monday’s conference is about.

The minister said the EU was trying to amplify the voice of those forces in a member state that were in a minority in the elections. He said it was an illegitimate and undemocratic attempt to favor political objectives that did not get the necessary majority in a democratic contest, “by blackmail, withholding money, threatening, disenfranchising”.

He recalled that 19th century classical liberalism is in no way to be confused with the political trend that calls itself liberalism today,” the minister said. The question is whether the EU will have a leadership and institutions that can tolerate the existence of values that run counter to the exclusive thinking they have created. This is the biggest struggle today,” he underlined. He said that if we talk about wars of truth, we can say that it is truth that makes us free and freedom that guarantees that the truth can be written.

Photo: MTI/Bruzák Noémi