“We Must Open Our Economy to Eastern Markets”, Viktor Orbán States

There is no such thing as a veto, the EU’s basic treaty does not recognize this concept, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in a radio interview this morning. Speaking on Kossuth Radio, the Prime Minister pointed out that instead, there are certain decisions simply require the agreement of all member states. Among them, there will be some that Hungary does not support, one of them being Ukraine’s accession to the EU, reported Magyar Nemzet.

The admission of Ukraine as a candidate country is not in Hungary’s national interest, so this issue should not be put on the EU’s agenda, Mr Orbán confirmed. According to the Prime Minister, the unity of the EU can only be preserved if divisive issues are not even put on the agenda.
The prime minister said that Ukraine’s accession was not properly prepared and consulted with member states, it was only presented as a matter to be put to vote by the Commission.

The European Commission should understand that the present situation with EU enlargement is its fault and should only bring up the issue once it has discussed it with member states.

This is important in terms of maintaining national independence, he added. “The European Union is not in Brussels, that is where the bureaucrats are. The EU is in Budapest, Warsaw, Paris and Berlin… etc. Hence if we, member states, all agree on certain issues, then we have an EU position. If we cannot agree, there is no EU position. We should not be forced into feeling guilty because we disagree on something”, Mr Orbán said.

As a counter-argument for a Ukrainian EU accession the Prime Minister pointed out that currently we cannot even say how much territory Ukraine controls in reality, that there are no studies on the inclusion of Ukrainian agriculture, and that we do not know how large the population is.

Ukrainian agriculture would destroy Hungarian agriculture, according to Hungarian farmers,

the Prime Minister said, adding that he had also consulted with farmers’ representatives on the issue. There is also no information on how much money Ukraine would receive, from where and from whom, the Prime Minister stressed. Until these questions are answered, there is no point in starting accession negotiations. He also reminded that the EU had already made this mistake once, with Turkey, which is also a candidate country, but no one knows how to bring it closer to the EU.

Viktor Orbán’s position remains unchanged: we need a ceasefire instead of war, we should not spend the money on war, but on a ceasefire. I am in favor of creating a fund within the EU into which we can put money separately, Mr Orbán said, pointing out that so far we have been giving money from within the budget, which has stretched had stretched it beyond its planned remit.

The EU budget should be amended because the money has run out. The Hungarian position is that if we want to give money to Ukraine, we should do it separately for each member state, and not hiding behind the back of the EU”,

the Prime Minister said.

Speaking about the issue of national sovereignty, the Prime Minister said that we are in a difficult battle. Our history has taught us that first, we have always been surrounded by larger empires. We have chosen our tactics in view of the fact that of course they all want a bite out of us, but we have managed to beat them and were at the funerals of many of these empires.

The other is that in 1100 years in Europe, Hungarians have shown how to organize this territory according to the Hungarian way of thinking and their culture. “Hungarians have the ability to create a state and to live in it, even though there are always those who want to sell part of the homeland for money”, alluding to the former opposition coalition that had received millions of dollars of donations from abroad during the 2022 parliamentary elections. “You do not have to look far in our history to see a case of sovereignty violation,” the Prime Minister explained. He said it is in the country’s interest to have clear and unambiguous rules, and now parliament has to take some decisions to protect sovereignty.

In the last twenty to thirty years Hungary has returned to become part of the Western world, after it left the Soviet bloc, Viktor Orbán said. Much of Hungary’s diplomatic effort has served this purpose. But we are beyond that, since our position withing the European community is beyond dispute.

Now we must adopt a fundamentally economic approach, and we must trade with all the countries of the world, because our market is small. As a country of ten million people, if it wants to do better, it has to sell its products all over the world, and to do that it has to be connected.

Any closure or blockade is against our interests, since Hungary is a small country of ten million people. If we had a market of 100 million people, we could perhaps afford to close ourselves off, because there would be enough of us, and the size of our economy would be big enough for us to produce a sufficient amount of wealth on our own.

As a country of ten million people, however, if we want to live at the standard we are living at now, or even better, we need to be able to sell our products globally, Mr Orbán said. “At the moment, the most developing part of the world is in the East, and decisions must be made on this basis”, the Prime Minister added.

Via Magyar Nemzet; Featured Photo: MTI/Miniszterelnöki Sajtóiroda/Fischer Zoltán