Budapest, 2 June 2015
Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you for the invitation and I would like to congratulate all those involved in the creation and organization of this conference.
Today we pay tribute to a great statesman. A man to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude. I consider it a great honour that we can express our deep respect in the company of so many eminent speakers. Let me respectfully greet Chancellor Schüssel; whenever I meet him it always occurs to me that a country which can afford the luxury of a European statesman like Mr. Schüssel not participating in its public life must be rich indeed. I would also like to greet President Vogel. We always think of him with respect because here in Hungary he is considered to be one of the last great theoreticians of Christian Democratic policy on our continent. And I would like to respectfully greet President Constantinescu, as well; he reminds us how high the spirit and politics can rise here in Central Europe if history makes it possible. Thank you, Mr. President, for being here with us! Of course we have come together to honour Mr. Helmut Kohl, but a conference like this is a good opportunity to raise the question of whether we wanted the kind of Europe that we currently live in, and also to look into the future and ask ourselves: is our European Union ready to respond to the challenges it faces?
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Hungarians have good reason to respect Helmut Kohl, as the unification of Germany opened the door to unification of Europe, and enabled Hungary to be a Member State of the European Union. Germany is a big country, Hungary is a small country; it gives us satisfaction to see that even the largest countries need providence, roughly as described in the following words of Bismarck: "In the history of nations, Providence manifests itself as the right man leading a country in a decisive place and at a decisive time." And a proof of Providence for us is that in the landmark hours of Germany in 1989–1990, the Federal Republic of Germany was led by Helmut Kohl.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Let me tell you a personal story. In 1998, to the great surprise of many – luckily I was not among them – our political community won a parliamentary election in Hungary. At that time I was just 35 and had the duty of forming a cabinet, and as I had never done such a thing before and we had nobody in our party with such experience (being the first time that Fidesz as a political community had won the opportunity to form a government in Hungary), I pondered on whom to talk to, and who could give me some good advice. And then I phoned the Chancellor of Germany, Helmut Kohl, and requested a meeting. I told him that I did not want to negotiate, I only wanted to visit him and discuss our profession in more detail, if he was not otherwise engaged. And it happened just like that; I arrived at his office on a summer’s afternoon. We talked for a couple of hours; I just asked him about good governance and I also asked some other naive questions. For example, I raised the dilemma of 'the role of morals', which is always a problem for individuals with Central European intellectual roots. In relation to politicians, I asked what the role of morals is when difficult decisions must be made in government; at such times, what is the relation between political morals and personal morals? In the subjects 'Political Science' and 'Political Philosophy' at university we heard a lot about these two areas being potentially divergent, and that some say this divergence is good. And then Helmut Kohl put a friendly hand on my shoulder and said “OK, enough of this mumbo-jumbo, the fact is that what is good in private life is also good in politics.” On the whole, Ladies and Gentlemen, this story is the best way I can describe Helmut Kohl's temperament and philosophy when he was guiding Germany and Europe; perhaps this is the most appropriate way it can be illustrated. There is no question of dual morals, no divided self; there is one set of morals, one guiding philosophy, one personality, one path in life. We cannot separate these things, and cannot apply different standards.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Recently we commemorated a number of landmarks in Europe history. We commemorated the centenary of the outbreak of World War I, the 70th anniversary of the Holocaust and the 25th anniversary of the collapse of the Eastern European communist dictatorships. In historical terms, the 20th century is often said to be a short one – lasting only from World War I up to the reunification of Germany: a span of just over seventy years. Today's Europe does not resemble either Europe before World War I or Europe between the two world wars, and it does not resemble the Europe of the Cold War, either. Those huge changes happened in a period of 76 years – roughly equal to a person’s life. If my generation speaks about that era then we are in practice speaking about the lives of our grandparents. What lives, and what changes!
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We are here today to honour the Chancellor as a representative of our grandparents' generation. To express our respect and appreciation to a man who was a creative statesman influencing the history of the 20th century. It is undoubtedly good to hear kind words, like those a short while ago, about the role of Hungarians; and it was indeed ted ,a historic act to knock out the first brick from the Berlin Wall, but the bulk of the work – the essence, the greater part of it – was undertaken by those who devoted their lives to removing the last brick and clearing the way for the unification of Germany and Europe. I know it is fitting to remember only the good things, but still at this moment let us recall a warning from history – or perhaps we should see it simply as a reminder of the human mind’s limitations. For although it seems inconceivable today, there were people in the last days of the Cold War in Europe – and, indeed, in the Federal Republic of Germany – who, for various reasons, would have stopped after having knocked out the first brick, or maybe the second or third brick.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
In contrast to them, Helmut Kohl undertook, through dynamic debate and discussion in domestic politics (though it is almost impossible to recall them), to destroy the walls separating the nations of Europe down to the last brick.
Dear Presidents, Ladies and Gentlemen,
It remains fresh in the memory that NATO, established at the end of the nineteen-forties, set itself three goals: “to keep the Russians out”, “to keep the Americans in” and “to keep the Germans down”. That is how it was at the end of the forties. By 1989 Europe had changed a lot. The Federal Republic of Germany had become a committed, key member of NATO, but somewhere in people's minds there was still a hidden fear (I personally remember this), of a united Germany. The German government of that time (led by Helmut Kohl) had to neutralize this fear, and as we can see he did it by means of a policy which should be remembered by all politicians. Of course there was no need for doing that in Hungary. Hungary is one of those nations (perhaps it is not important now to dwell on whether there are many of them or few of them) which not only respect Germans for their achievements, but also like them. This is why in Hungary there was no need to convince us that German reunification would not involve any danger. Indeed, the opposite was true: every Hungarian was glad to see the happiness of Germans, and the most sensible people also knew that German reunification was in Hungary’s basic national interests. For the unification of Germany is the only irrevocable guarantee that Hungary will not be occupied again: in other words, the Cold War will not return. German unification is the only irrevocable guarantee that a new world order will emerge in which Hungary can finally be part of the free and independent world. This is why Hungarians have always considered German unification to be a guarantee of our own independence and our own freedom.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
When speaking about the Chancellor, there is something else we must talk about. This is something that we do not have a great deal of in Europe nowadays: courage. Not only personal courage, but courage in politics. The film has already dealt with courage in diplomacy. But there were some hard years after reunification. It is a difficult question and nobody knew how a nation should be reunified. It could have been done in many ways. Finally it happened in the way Helmut Kohl wanted it to, and the only word I can use to sum up this work is 'courage'. By 1990 the economy of the German Democratic Republic (the GDR – what a nice term to remind us of our youth!) was on the brink of bankruptcy, and Chancellor Kohl decided to enter into complete financial, economic and social union with that country. From afar, At least, it did not seem at all economically sensible to convert wages, pensions, grants and certain social services on a one-to-one basis. Nevertheless the Chancellor had the courage to do just that. Neither did it seem economically reasonable to allow the exchange on a one-to-one basis of cash savings in East German marks: 2,000 for savers of 14 and under; 4,000 for 15–59-year-olds and 6,000 for those over 60. It is especially remarkable that the older a person was, the larger the sum that could be exchanged. I put this question to you: in today's world do elderly people receive the respect that resulted from the mathematics of Chancellor Kohl back then? And for a lot of people it did not seem reasonable either that the West German social system expanded to include the territory of the former GDR. But he also had the courage to do that, and time has proved him right (although after huge debates).
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Let us talk about the fact that the reunification of Europe – and the enlargement policy of the European Union – was made possible by the reunification of Germany and by Chancellor Kohl. West Germany, the strongest state in Europe, entered into a financial, political and economic union with the Socialist Bloc country which at that time was in perhaps the most acute crisis situation. And at the same time this was a remedy for the 'eurosclerosis' of the nineteen-seventies and eighties. This was the short name for the pessimistic belief that enormous economic and social differences ruled out further enlargement of the European Union. But Helmut Kohl proved that if it can be done in Germany, then it is also possible on a European scale. A lot of sceptics turned into supporters, and the integration process gathered pace.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Nowadays, with the European Union again combating a serious disease, we could not turn to a better doctor than the man who once cured Europe. This is why last year I turned with pleasure to Helmut Kohl's book “Out of Concern for Europe”. This book calls on all of us to act in unison. It calls on us not to surrender the idea that peace and freedom are essential for Europe, and reminds us that they are also preconditions for all other things: democracy, human rights, the rule of law, social stability and welfare and our responsibility for Europe and the world. The historic act of introducing the euro was also referred to in the film. Today that project is not one of the most popular European projects, and we have to talk about this question honestly, too. The road to the introduction of the common currency embodied the best qualities of European history and European politics: great courage, broad vision, firm determination. It is somewhat uplifting when countries with great history give up their currencies and undertake to create a new world currency for not only themselves but for the whole modern global financial system. Events since that time, however, have not been successful, and the project has stalled, as they say in Brussels. It was our conception and hope that it would be reasonable to follow monetary union with fiscal union and common budgetary management, and that eventually common economic governance would also be evolved across the area of the single currency. This vision has not come into being.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today there is moderate optimism on the future of the European economy. That is good, even though in reality we have no reason at all to be optimistic. The debate weighing on our continent can be summarized by the following question: in such times, how can we respond well to the challenges of economic crisis? And no matter how we put that question, no matter how polite we are and no matter how carefully we rephrase it, the truth is that there are two different cultures of economic crisis management in Europe: one in the north and one in the south. The northern culture behaves very sensibly. It is a matter of debate where Austria belongs in this classification system, but that is a question for Hungarians as well as Austrians. So the northern mentality is logical: they analyse and assess the situation, draw conclusions and then enact reform. If necessary, they enact structural reform, conducting this process from the centre by means of political governance. A lot of people think this is the only approach, the only reasonable approach in times of economic crisis, and they are surprised when they go to the south, because there they find another approach. The essence of crisis management in the south is that life will adapt itself to the changes. Politics has only one thing to do; to provide free range for that adaptation. In economic terms this means that a currency should deprecate in order to provide the opportunity to regain competitiveness. No one speaks about reforms, no one speaks about structural reforms, and if so – as we see in Italy today – proposals for reform on the scale there was in Germany or in Hungary nowadays generate enormous resistance; the difference in volume is obvious. Those reform plans are not as deep as, for example, those in Hungary.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today the only reason for optimism on the eurozone is that in practice, instead of applying the northern logic of crisis management, the logic of the south has emerged at a Europe-wide level. Today we can be moderately optimistic, because the European Central Bank has brought the dollar-euro exchange rate down to near parity, and at that level the southern states have also become competitive. This is classic southern-style crisis management. It is no accident that there is ongoing debate on this issue, and resultant tension within the European Union. However it should be noted here that monetary stimulus is like farming. It is pointless to water the soil if it has not first been ploughed and sown; it is useless to pour money into a non-competitive economy if it has not first been reformed or restructured. No money would be enough to result in competitiveness that would make it worthwhile. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is why the disputes about the future of the European economy and Europe are valid and cannot be avoided, and I would like to warn against the illusion that we have found the way of making the eurozone competitive again compared to other currently more successful regions in the global economy.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Perhaps we also owe it to Chancellor Kohl to talk about another issue which is more topical and causes even bigger tension than the ones mentioned before. This is an issue about which the leaders of Europe have been arguing a great deal. Now I am not thinking about capital punishment, because on that the situation is clear. The President of the European Commission is right: no Member State can introduce any legislation that is contrary to the founding treaties of the European Union. As a result, it cannot be introduced, and we do not intend to do so. I am not thinking of that issue, but I am thinking of asylum. This is a much more serious question than it seems to be at first sight; it is much more serious, and it has more far-reaching consequences than we might believe. If we do not restrict ourselves to a European horizon, but look at the world as a whole – as we were taught to by our teachers – then we will see that this is not a matter of immigration, but of modern-day migration affecting almost every part of our planet. Therefore what we must respond to is not the question of immigration, but the following question: what will Europe be like after the migration of the modern era – what will our continent be like after such a wave of migration? Well, the answer depends on how we adapt to this new age of migration. So we are talking about a serious question involving far-reaching consequences. Europe may change. There are capitals in Europe where, visiting them again after a break of a couple years, we immediately feel as if we are in a transformed city. This change facing Europe – or which, in my opinion, is threatening Europe – can also have an effect at deeper, civilizational layers. The identity of civilization in Europe could change. And what is even worse, if this happens it will be irreversible. The reason we have to deal very seriously with the problem of migration and immigration is that the processes underway cannot be reversed retroactively, especially given the human rights norms and Christian values according to which we live our lives and organize our continent. If we fail, we fail for ever. This would mean that the identity of civilization in Europe would never be the same as it is now. Germany was able to reunify and thereby find a way back: the German nation was able to return to its own history. But there is no way back from a multicultural Europe, either towards a Christian Europe or a world of national cultures.
In Hungary there is some misunderstanding about the term 'multiculturalism'. It is quite customary to call the coexistence of national cultures as 'multiculturalism', but this is erroneous. Various national cultures living together form a diverse cultural community which is essentially located within Christian civilization, and therefore it can be considered a community rooted in that civilization. Multiculturalism does not mean this, but means that there are groups, cultures and cultural phenomena from various civilizations living side by side. I would like to reiterate that if Europe chooses that way, there will be no way back, either to a Christian Europe or to a world of national cultures. In 2010, however, the current Chancellor of Germany said that multiculturalism is finished. Today we Hungarians are in the same position that we were in during the chancellorship of Helmut Kohl: we keep our fingers crossed, and pray that the German chancellor is right again.
Thank you for your attention!
(Prime Minister's Office)
