In his “State of the Nation” address on Sunday, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán declared that “For us, it’s ‘Hungary First’”.
Assessing his party’s period in government since 2010, the Prime Minister said that the past eight years have been successful, “perhaps better than we had expected”, adding that “we are perhaps further ahead in our timetable than we had planned”. He outlined some of the Government’s important economic achievements: it had undertaken to create one million jobs within ten years, and this figure already stands at 736,000; last Christmas it was able to pay a pension premium to pensioners; and it has successfully brokered agreements on both wage increases and tax reductions.
“In my view, even including the errata, these past eight years are not only acceptable, but there are several achievements of which we can indeed be proud”, said Mr. Orbán, who expressed the wish that Hungary can in the future have eight years at least as good as the past eight.
Although the country looks in better shape than it did eight years ago, it is still not as it could be, he said: it is performing better, but still not as well as it could be, based on its capabilities, and “we still haven’t reached the end of our task, there is still a long way to go”.
The Prime Minister stated his belief that Hungary is a country where hard work is rewarded, where those who work harder earn more, and where the whole of society is held together by families.
“We Hungarians will have a future if we remain Hungarian, if we nurture the Hungarian language, if we protect our Christian and Hungarian culture, and if we preserve our independence and Hungarian freedom”, he said.
In Mr. Orbán’s opinion the Hungarian model is working, and it is successful because millions of Hungarians believe in it. He stressed that valuing work, supporting families, maintaining national identity and preserving independence are the elements of the future, and this future can be Hungary’s. The Prime Minister thanked job-creating Hungarian enterprises, young people who have set out on the path of raising a family, and the 700,000 people who now support their families through work rather than welfare benefits.
Among the country’s achievements, he spoke about ending the country’s high exposure to unfavourable decisions made elsewhere. He noted that “when paying utility bills, families are no longer paying for the profits of the multinationals”, and stated that natural gas will soon arrive not only from Russia, but also from Romania and even Poland, thus ending the era of Hungary’s energy dependence.
He also highlighted the fact that over 50 per cent of the banking system is in Hungarian ownership, and over fifty per cent of the Hungarian media is also in Hungarian hands. “There can be no national independence without a Hungarian banking system and Hungarian media”, he declared.
According to the Prime Minister, “We currently have our independence, but this isn’t like jam: it doesn’t keep on the shelf indefinitely, and it has to be defended from time to time”. He urged his audience not to forget that the fate of the country must not be placed in the hands of internationalists.
Mr. Orbán also said that governing a country requires experience and confidence, knowledge of the terrain and an international outlook, adding that “We are not just a civic government, but also a national government”. He went on to coin a modern version of the old slogan “Homeland before all else”, declaring, “For us, it’s ‘Hungary First’”.
In addition, the Prime Minister drew attention to the fact that Hungary has significantly increased in prestige, and that “our reputation, visibility and influence is greater than the size of the country or our economy would seem to warrant”. In his view this is primarily thanks to the fact that for the past eight years the Fidesz-KDNP coalition has “stopped political correctness in Hungary in its tracks. Eurobabble, liberal grandstanding and ‘PC’ platitudes have been ditched. We've sent the muzzle back to Brussels and the dog lead to the IMF”.
He stated that straight-talking is the fashion in Budapest, where “we want to say what we think, and we want to do what we say”; this, he said, is a great luxury in today’s European politics, and “we Hungarians are practically wallowing in it – although it would be good if the water splashed out onto the bank less often”.
On the thirty years that Fidesz has been in existence, Mr. Orbán stressed the party’s anti-communism and patriotism. “We love Hungary passionately and are ready to do everything possible for it”, he said, noting that this is what sets them apart from the other political parties.
With regard to the opposition, the Prime Minister noted that seeing the condition they are in he cannot always believe his eyes. In his opinion Hungary deserves better, and he cannot understand how, while they are in such a state, they can in any way ask for the people’s trust or put themselves forward to govern the country.
He said that to head its electoral list one party has taken on an outsider, who calls himself a prime-ministerial candidate, when in fact everyone can see that he is just a “bankruptcy receiver”, whose historic task will be to lead the MSZP out of Parliament.
The other left-wing party has rediscovered its old roots and under the leadership of a former prime minister, he said, and is “turning itself back into a true communist party”, threatening people with prison, nationalisation and a new system change. In spiritual terms, all it can say is that the churches “should shut up”, he noted.
He added that there is also a party whose only message in relation to the world is that it can be different: “A brilliant insight, but from them we will certainly not find out what that world should be like”. He explained that they are so different that one even has difficulty deciding whether they are right- or left-wing, nationalist or internationalist, and “There is so much coming and going that we don’t even know who is a member and who isn’t”. He observed that it is impossible to even remember the names of the parties that have been formed by its former members, because they are barely visible and so short-lived.
The Prime Minister said that the most absurd thing is that “in these dangerous and migrant-battered times” a national party which has seen better days has come up with the idea that the last hope for humanity is Islam.
“It is no wonder that the dominant mood in the country is not for a change of government, but a change of opposition”, the Prime Minister said, adding that “We are the ones who believe that the last hope for Europe is Christianity”.
Speaking from a podium bearing the slogan “For us, it’s ‘Hungary First’”, Mr. Orbán said that the “dark clouds” which immigration has caused to gather over Europe are an indication that estimates of the number of immigrants in Western European countries will increase at an accelerating rate.
According to NATO reports, by 2020 sixty million people will have set out for Europe, he noted, adding that most of these immigrants will come from Islamic countries.
“If things carry on like this, there will be a clear Muslim majority in Europe’s major cities, and London will not be an outlier, but a pioneer”, he said.
During his fifty-minute address, the Prime Minister also spoke about the dispute between Western and Central Europe, explaining that Western Europe has become an immigration zone and a mixed-race environment, while Central Europe is moving towards a totally different and very new developmental future.
In relation to this, Mr. Orbán said that Hungary has successfully defended its southern borders, as a result of building the fence, introducing legal and physical border defences and the exemplary steadfastness of the border police. “We are standing on stable foundations”, he said, but “no matter how absurd it may be”, the threat now facing Hungary is from the West.
According to the Prime Minister, the danger is being “brought down upon us” by politicians in Brussels, Berlin and Paris who want Hungary to adopt their policies: “the policies that made them immigrant countries and opened the gates to the decline of Christian culture and the spread of Islam”.
Today the “fashionable mantra” is that Central Europe must become like them, because that constitutes solidarity, he remarked. In response, Mr. Orbán said, it must be clearly stated that “Hungary is in solidarity with Western European people and leaders who want to save their homelands and their Christian culture”.
The Prime Minister said that in his view the countries of the Visegrád Group (V4) are steadfast. He also highlighted the fact that Austria has also now set out in a patriotic and Christian direction, and that an intellectual and political resistance has developed in Bavaria under the leadership of the CSU. He also looks forward to the results of the Italian election and the resulting turning-point, with which “common sense, Italian national and cultural identity and Silvio Berlusconi can once again return to a position of government: Forza Italia!”.
He also mentioned those European politicians who in recent years “have sunk their teeth into us, but who have ended up breaking their teeth in the process”. Among these he listed former Austrian chancellors Werner Faymann and Christian Kern, Italian prime mister Matteo Renzi and Croatian prime minister Zoran Milanović. He also mentioned German politician Martin Schulz, who, according to Mr. Orbán, was obsessed with becoming everything, but eventually became nothing. “The list is by no means exhaustive, and I believe there are still some vacant places”, he noted.
The Prime Minister also indicated that the opposing forces, George Soros’s network and the international bureaucrats bought by him, have by no means given up the fight. There are some who can still smell money, he noted, and others who do not want to lose the jobs and the infantry salaries paid to them by the global elite. He cited a “well-developed example” of the latter: an activist from one of George Soros’s Hungarian organisations, who said that “People coming here from practically anywhere are better than the local population”.
The Prime Minister criticised one of the Soros network’s main ideologues, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, who had “let slip” that a secret programme for “breeding a Soros-type race” had been launched some years ago. “From their point of view, we natives with our own homeland, our own culture and our own religion […] from the perspective of people like Soros, we are individuals beyond redemption, who cannot be converted”, Mr. Orbán pointed out. He added that “We will not stand by idly while people plot to implement the Soros Plan, and if necessary we shall deploy an increasingly strong legal arsenal”.
As a first step, the Prime Minister cited the “Stop Soros” legislative package, explaining that it would enact the following: make activities related to migration and migrants conditional on a licence; divert a proportion of the foreign funding received by pro-migrant non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to border protection; order full financial screening of such organisations; and stipulate that those who do not give up their dangerous plans will simply be banned from the country – “no matter how powerful and rich they may be”.
“We will also be battling in the international arena”, he declared, indicating that on Monday he will present the Prime Minister of Bulgaria – whose country currently holds the Presidency of the Council of the European Union – with a European legislative proposal that could provide for complete protection of Europe’s borders.
“What is important is border protection, not the mandatory migrant quota”, the Prime Minister underlined, “Because if we secure our borders nobody will be able to enter without permission, and so there will be nobody to distribute”. He argued that those who allow migrants to enter their countries should keep them and care for them.
Mr. Orbán also explained that the United Nations has also come up with the idea of concluding an international agreement on migration before the end of the year, and the organisation wants the international community to accept that immigration and facilitating immigration contribute positively to economic growth and prosperity. The UN also wants to do away with restrictions on immigrants crossing borders, he added, noting that “we can hold our heads up high: this is about the fence, and this was addressed specifically to us”.
According to the Prime Minister, this means that George Soros and his organisations have not only installed themselves in Brussels and Budapest, but also in the United Nations in New York, and are spending huge amounts of money on ensuring that migration is accepted at a global level.
But, Mr. Orbán declared, “We are not alone, and we shall fight together to contain and then stop the plan that Soros has put forward in Brussels and in the UN; and if we have enough allies – and we may indeed have enough allies – then I am sure that we will eventually succeed”. He closed his speech with his customary rallying cry: “Go for it Hungary, go for it Hungarians!”
(Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister/MTI)
