At the heart and the core of that economic policy should be an economic neutrality, Orbán said, adding that he firmly believed that neutrality would be key to the country’s economic success.

Answering a question, the prime minister said that in terms of its economic growth this year, Hungary is among the top third in Europe. “I am however not satisfied with this. I will only be if Hungary becomes first in that regard. Our target is a 3-5 percent growth rate which is not impossible to achieve in the coming year,” said Orbán.

On other topics, he said the repurchase of Budapest’s Liszt Ferenc international airport was a transaction of buying back a state asset. “The purchase of telco company Vodafone was a historic step, serving the goal that Hungary should have in its infocommunication sector a strong international company in state ownership. These have all been important and necessary steps,” the prime minister said.

“The country’s present state shows well that we were right on time to realise that instead of entering into any bloc, nurturing good relations with every important player of the complex world economy could be the solution to the Hungarian economy,” he said.

Asked about the dispute between the central bank and the government, Orbán said that “there would always be disputes about the economy because there are ones who have a certain vision about a good economy and there are others with a different vision”. “But there should however be no dispute between the central bank and the government”.

Asked about the situation of Hungary’s health care, Orbán said the country had 8,000 more doctors than in 2010. He noted a wage increase in the sector and an increase in the number of wards with air-conditioning each year. “We make progress every year in health care, too, but of course we have not yet finished the job.”

Asked about the situation of ruling Fidesz and the Hungarian right wing, Orbán, who is the leader of Fidesz, said his party had garnered 45 percent of the votes in the recent EP elections which “is the best result”. “We are Europe’s strongest political organisation,” he said, noting that “the next strongest party to follow had garnered 30 percent”.

Asked about how ethical he found that the state had purchased from his son-in-low an office compound in a deal worth 500 billion forints (EUR 1.2bn), Orbán said “what is ethical is that we observe the rules, every rule”.

As regards the issue of EU funding, Orbán said that “we have 12 billion euros on our account”. “We keep saying that there are no EU monies, but how the hell wouldn’t there be?”. “There are 12 billion euros waiting to be drawn into the Hungarian economy,” said Orbán, adding that “I am waiting for the Hungarian businesses to implement the tenders we called, that payments are made from the central budget and that we receive this money in post-financing. So the situation today is not that there is no money, but that the money is there, it is just that we cannot draw it in quickly enough,” he said.

Regarding the seven-year EU budget, the prime minister said that in using the funds, the fastest or second-fastest was Hungary out of the 27 member states, adding that “I would be careful even with criticism”. He said that the 12 billion euros of funding would last for many years to come.

Speaking of his leaked peace plan, Orbán said that if the Union had accepted any element of the proposal, there would be much less trouble today. “By the way, the peace mission has not ended. I have worked on it all summer, we are doing international work, there will be striking initiatives that will be presented as soon as this month”.

Speaking about foreign policy, the prime minister said that the essence of it was in building friendships and alliances. “The fact that two countries do not have good relations with each other does not preclude Hungary from being on good terms with both. It is in Hungary’s interest that the world economy does not fall apart into blocs, he said.

“Hungary can be on good terms at the same time with the Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Arabs and the European Union, we are a sovereign country,” Orbán said.

Regarding that a company, which can be tied to the Hungarian Export Promotion Agency (HEPA) office in Moscow, would have delivered radio telephones to Russia in breach of sanctions, Orbán said that Hungarian national security services had not indicated any problems.

Answering questions on the state of Hungary’s railways and hospitals, the prime minister said that his cabinet’s most effective minister was in charge of transport, who had introduced the national travel pass, and the state secretary responsible for health care had served previously as a hospital director himself.

Asked if he would sit down for a debate in Strasbourg with MEP Peter Magyar, who heads the opposition Tisza party, Orbán said that he himself was not a member of the European Parliament but would fulfil the obligation arising from Hungary filling the role of the presidency of the European Council and would be available to all representatives of the EP.

The price of petrol in Hungary averaged 605/litre during the month, HUF 7 under the average in neighbouring countries. The price of diesel stood at HUF 611/litre, level with the average in neighbouring countries.

The price of petrol was lower in August compared to July by HUF 7/litre and diesel prices fell HUF 10/litre.

Hungary’s government earlier said it would intervene if motor fuel prices exceeded the average in neighbouring countries.

The National Economy Ministry reiterated it was now tracking monthly, rather than weekly, fuel price levels, in line with a recommendation by the Hungarian Petroleum Association (MASZ) and the Independent Petrol Stations Association.

The 800sqm building’s roof caught fire on Friday evening, Zsuzsanna Rinyu told MTI. Firefighters arrived after 7.30pm at the scene where the fire broke out in the 2nd floor of the aquatherapy department and spread further to the roof, she said. The rescue operation was carried out with ten vehicles and a team of 40 firefighters and was concluded after midnight, Rinyu added. “It managed to prevent the fire’s spreading to the nearby forest”.

Meanwhile, the new, incoming mayor of county seat Miskolc told a press conference on Saturday that the city would turn to the central government for help since the case “concerns lost tourism revenues and people’s jobs”. Jozsef Toth-Szantai said the next step to follow was to conduct an investigation to establish the cause of the fire and the damage caused.

Few wars had been fought without communication between the warring parties, a key factor to ending the war, he said. Communication must be maintained with both countries, he said.

Orbán said brokering peace started with communication and led to a peace plan through a ceasefire.

He also talked about his travels to Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing and the US over the summer. He said he had started on a “peace mission” to “understand what are the chances of peace”. “And my conclusion was … that there is no intention on either side to have peace. Both leaders said … that time is on their side.”

The next step should be “creating an international context that expresses … that the world wanted a ceasefire as soon as possible,” Orbán said. Without that, it would be extremely difficult to convince the warring parties of moving towards peace, he said.

Speaking about Hungary’s presidency of the Council of the EU, Orbán said their priority was restoring the European Union’s competitiveness, adding that “forcing” a political union among member states would only make that goal more difficult.

He called for a review of the European Green Deal, which he said was going against the interests of European companies. The EU has recently imposed tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, which German car makers had said went against their interests, he said.

Orbán said red tape should also be cut and the number of bureaucrats and bureaucratic procedures reduced. Investments must be brought back to Europe, rather than having European companies invest in North America or China where the business environment was better, he said.

Orbán called for further strengthening ties in the united European market but “forgetting” a political union. The latter would be a mortal wound to EU competitiveness, he said.

While a political union was a potential “disintegrating factor”, further integrating defence capabilities would be crucial, he said.

Orbán said political challenges were not about general European values enshrined in the treaties. The issues of war, migration, gender and a work-based society, however, were re-shaping the European political arena, he said. He cautioned against a political union among states with starkly different views on those matters because that could “disintegrate the European Union”.

Migration was another “disintegrating factor” in the EU, Orbán said, with member states battling various difficulties that couldn’t be handled with a unified approach. Migration should be decided on a national level, by the citizens and leaders of member states, he said.

If the EU forced member states to join forces in issues they disagreed on, that could disintegrate the EU, Orbán said.

Orbán asked why this was necessary and said it was a serious problem that many migrants had been allowed to enter Italy and several other countries, as these countries were now facing difficulties about how they can live together with them.

Orbán said Hungary’s problem was not how to live together with migrants but how not to let them into the country. These were different issues and the two different difficulties could not be handled with the same political tools, he added.

Countries unwilling to follow the EU policy on migration should be allowed to opt out, rather than forcing them to cooperate, risking that the conflicts then would “disintegrate” the bloc, he said.

“The European Union is changing, and it should,” the minister said, arguing that as an EU member Hungary had a vested interest in the bloc’s success.

Boka said there was broad support for EU membership in Hungary just as there had been 20 years ago when the country joined the bloc, adding that there was no alternative to EU membership.

He said Hungary was bound to Europe both culturally and historically. “Our place is in Europe and in the EU,” he said, adding that Europeanness formed an integral part of modern Hungarian identity.

Hungary’s security, he said, could only be guaranteed if the country was part of a strong defence community, one of whose pillars was NATO and the other the EU.

He said that with Hungary’s open and export-oriented economy, it was “inconceivable” to achieve growth and development goals without an unlimited access to the common market.

Boka said there were no disagreements on Hungary’s EU membership within the government. EU membership, he added, did not mean “the end of history”, because as the world continues to change, so must relations.

Turning to the priorities of the Hungarian presidency, he mentioned the EU’s competitiveness. He said that whereas in 1992 the EU had accounted for more than 21 percent of the global economy, by 2022 this had shrunk to 14.8 percent. He said that to restore competitiveness it was critical to address demographic challenges, including guaranteeing a skilled workforce in the most important sectors, and ensuring the European economy’s access to raw materials and affordable energy. Europe’s capital market, he said, lagged behind that of the United States in terms of development, and this led to a competitive disadvantage.

Boka called the EU’s post-pandemic Resilience and Recovery Facility (RRF) the “biggest failure of recent years”, arguing that its implementation had been too drawn out and slow, and its administrative burdens were too high. The implementation of the green transition, he added, could also be considered a failure because it was still impossible to tell what kinds of financial resources the “road to climate neutrality” required and what its economic effects would be.

The Hungarian presidency considers it a priority to adopt a new competitiveness pact focused on industrial transition, the management of labour and demographic problems, investment in innovation and skills as well as the renewal of funding, Boka said. He said the EU’s competitiveness would be a main topic at the Nov 8 informal summit of EU leaders in Budapest.

Meanwhile, Boka underlined the importance of developing the EU’s cohesion policy in a way that guarantees that it is capable of helping less developed regions catch up with the rest of the bloc.

He noted that the EU is set to begin planning its next multi-year budget during the Hungarian presidency. He said plans were to shift financing from traditional policies to new policies that boost competitiveness. He said this would also mean that the EU would finance policies that favour member states with a higher level of development, which would leave fewer resources available in terms of real value, and access to them would be even more closely linked to the fulfilment of the political criteria set by the European Commission.

The minister said it was also important for the Hungarian presidency to achieve “tangible results” on EU enlargement.