The European Union is in a much more difficult situation than it was thirteen years ago, when Hungary last held the rotating presidency of the European Council, conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told a press conference in Strasbourg on Tuesday, October 8th, one day before he is due to present the programme of the current Hungarian presidency at the European Parliament’s plenary session.
While the EU had to contend with the aftermath of the financial crisis, the Arab Spring, and the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, it is now facing a migration crisis, a war in Europe, a severe conflict in the Middle East, hostilities in Africa, and all these conflicts are in danger of escalating.
In the meantime, Europe is gradually being left behind by the United States and China in terms of competitiveness—a fact underlined by the recently released report of former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi. Orbán stressed that Europe’s share of the global trade is constantly decreasing, and European companies are paying up to five times more for natural gas and two to three times more for electricity than their counterparts in the U.S., while spending less on research and development.
The Hungarian presidency plans to address these problems by hosting an informal meeting of European leaders—a competitiveness summit—on November 8th in Budapest to present a five-year plan for member states to implement to improve their competitiveness. Hungary believes that reducing administrative burdens, cutting overregulation, making energy prices affordable, and introducing a green policy that harmonises sensible climate policies with the needs of European industry should be the key elements of the programme.
With regards to migration, he says he has been criticised for Hungary’s decision to erect a fence on its southern borders to keep out illegal migrants, but that, eventually, every European leader will come to the same conclusion that he has been reiterating since the beginning of the migration crisis in 2015: that protecting the external borders of the EU and establishing hotspots outside of the bloc for migrants to hand in their asylum requests is the only solution. “We can try all kinds of different pacts, but in the end, there is only one way migration can be stopped, and the magic word is hotspots,” the prime minister said, referring to the EU’s Migration and Asylum Pact, which Hungary wants to opt out of.
Hungary has been fined by the European Court of Justice for not letting in illegal migrants into its territory and forcing them to hand in their asylum claims at Hungarian embassies in neighbouring non-EU countries. Orbán emphasised that illegal migration will only come to an end if the EU chooses who it wants to let in. It is an illusion that migrants who have entered the EU illegally can be deported or will go home voluntarily, he added. “The only migrants who will not stay here are those we do not let in,” he said.
The prime minister warned that illegal migration has contributed to the rise of antisemitism, homophobia, and violence against women. He said that the lack of a successful common migration policy is spurring member states to protect their own internal borders within the Schengen Area.
The Hungarian EU presidency therefore suggests that summits involving the leaders of Schengen countries be regularly held in a similar format to the Eurogroup.
Viktor Orbán also talked of the need to create a European defence industry, to establish a competitive, crisis-resilient, farmer-friendly agricultural policy, and to speed up the accession talks of Western Balkan countries that desire to join the EU, saying these states have been waiting twenty years with no results.
If the Hungarian presidency can move forward in all these aspects, then the motto of the presidency—which began in July and lasts until December—will become reality: “Make Europe Great Again,” he said.
Following his introduction, Viktor Orbán was asked by journalists about his insistence on not supporting Ukraine militarily and promoting peace talks. The prime minister has been heavily criticised by many of his European counterparts for his peace mission in July, a trip to Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing, and Washington D.C. in a bid to restore dialogue between Russia and Ukraine who have been at war since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more than two-and-a-half years ago. He was especially chided for meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Orbán responded by saying Hungary—in contrast to the majority of other EU nations—was convinced that Ukraine cannot win the war on the battlefield and therefore, efforts to achieve a ceasefire and protect human life must be made.
He called out the hypocrisy of Western European nations who he said have spent 8.5 billion dollars on Russian energy imports since the start of the Ukraine war, yet keep criticising Hungary which wants to continue doing business with Russia in areas that are not under EU sanctions.
The prime minister rejected accusations made by journalists who said Hungary has become infamous for blocking common EU decisions on foreign policy, including military assistance to Ukraine. But Orbán said Hungary was only defending its interests while trying to come to a compromise. He emphasised that the EU’s official motto is “unity in diversity” and that this should be respected. “European politics should not be about telling certain people to shut their mouth in the name of unity,” he added.
Orbán said that the European elite, the Brussels bubble, which consists of leftist, liberal, and centre-right parties, has become out-of-touch with the everyday lives of ordinary people, and there is a strong protest movement that does not agree with mainstream politics. Yet the elite undemocratically isolates parties and groups that represent the will of the people, such as the Patriots for Europe (PfE) group in the European Parliament—which Orbán’s Fidesz party is a member of. He said that the Hungarian parliament has never stooped to the level of the European Parliament which denied the PfE, the third largest group, acquiring senior positions in the institution.
The prime minister said the member parties of the Patriots for Europe group have been branded by the mainstream as anti-Europeans, whereas the truth is that they are pro-European parties who don’t want to destroy Europe but change it.
