The special legal order can be revoked because Hungary has concluded the first phase of the fight against the coronavirus epidemic successfully, the Parliamentary State Secretary of the Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister said on Kossuth Radio’s programme ‘Sunday Paper’.

Csaba Dömötör said in Hungary the coronavirus has claimed far fewer lives than in other European countries; this is what allows us to gradually restart life and enables the government to focus more intensively on the protection of jobs.

Decisions adopted in good time, the disciplined conduct of millions of Hungarians and the relentless hard work of experts together have brought about the country’s results, he stated, thanking everyone who took part in this combined effort.

According to Mr Dömötör, the revocation of the special legal order also draws attention to the fact that public actors who have attacked Hungary and Hungarian democracy on this score in recent weeks “have every reason to queue up and make their apologies”. He said it is sad that many of them are Hungarian opposition politicians. It seems that the trouble we are facing cannot be great enough to stop them from attacking their own country, he added.

Regarding the fact that in a television interview DK’s Gergely Arató found it regrettable that Hungary is not doing badly concerning the number of the deceased, Mr Dömötör said he is not sure whether it was a genuine mistake or “an ugly Freudian slip” but the numbers clearly show the results of the fight against the epidemic. He stressed that it is best to rely on percentage to total population statistics because these are comparable, and based on these Hungary is among the countries doing best containing the epidemic.

He pointed out that according to Thursday total numbers, the number of fatalities in relation to one hundred thousand persons stood at 80 in Belgium, at 59 in Spain, at 37 in Sweden and at just five in Hungary. This significant difference proves the worth of Hungarian experts which deserves everyone’s profoundest appreciation, the State Secretary said.

He highlighted that the opposition effectively “continually torpedoed” united action. On the one hand, they did not vote for the relevant laws and kept spreading fake news, and on the other, attacked experts fighting on the frontline such as Chief Medical Officer Cecília Müller.

According to Mr Dömötör, “there is something very wrong” with an opposition Member of Parliament telling a foreign television channel that health care workers are not receiving personal protection equipment, or with another one claiming in Parliament that Hungary has the worst fatality statistics in the whole world. It would be best if they switched off “this type of fake news generator” within the shortest possible time because it is harmful in many respects, he pointed out.

Regarding the judgement of the Court of Justice of the European Union relating to transit zones, he said this does not change the fact that the government “wants to protect the borders” because they do not want immigration. The government was compelled to decide to close down transit zones, and as a result, from now on asylum requests can be submitted at Hungary’s foreign representations. If this results in an international dispute, “we are ready for it,” he said.

He added that the court’s decision highlights that the debate about migration will stay with us on a long-term basis. The epidemic or economic difficulties will not remove migration from the agenda; on the contrary, negative impacts could reinforce one another, and so we must stand our ground on multiple fronts. The main question is not for how long we have been talking about this topic or whether we are bored with it or not; it is about what consequences there would be if the government yielded on the issue of immigration, he said.

Regarding job protection measures, he observed that Hungary was in good shape when the epidemic hit. In the past few years, unemployment has fallen from 12 per cent to 4 per cent. He added that the main goal of the government’s economy protection measures is to protect jobs. Ever more businesses are taking advantage of the available wage support scheme and investment grants. With these two measures alone, applicant businesses have pledged to retain two hundred thousand jobs, Mr Dömötör highlighted.

He also said the government will ensure that upon the expiry of eligibility for the job-seekers’ allowance everyone should have access to some job opportunity, whether from the state or from the market. According to expectations, with the restarting of life, sectors that earlier found themselves in trouble could also find their feet again; it is enough to mention tourism in this regard.

Mr Dömötör stressed that tax cuts and job protection are at variance with opposition concepts which seek to focus on a regime of benefits. These calculate with a high rate of unemployment as a matter of course; however, the government would not like this, and so they are focusing on protecting existing jobs and creating new ones, the State Secretary said.

(Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister / MTI)