Government official: EU ‘tool for Hungary’s progress’

Hungary cannot rise without participating in EU cooperation, but “the EU won’t solve Hungary’s problems or raise the country, only we are capable of that,” Balazs Orban said at the Ludovika Festival in Budapest.

He said the EU’s 2004 enlargement, when Hungary joined the bloc along with 9 other states, had been the “last success story of the EU’s history”. The EU itself has called the period since a “decade full of challenges”, in view of a range of crises from Brexit to the war in Ukraine, he said.

The countries joining in 2004 have benefited enormously from the accession, he said, but added that those countries had gone through a period of disillusionment in the subsequent period, when the EU “failed to provide a magic recipe during the 2008-2009 economic crisis”.

Orban said representing Hungarian interests in Europe “is a serious, everyday political struggle”. “If we don’t raise our voices, they won’t consider our interests.”

Regarding the Hungarian EU presidency, he said the key issue would be “whether Europe sees a major war or not”.

He insisted the bloc was drifting towards direct confrontation between NATO and Russia.

Many European countries “thinking differently from Hungary” are using “all propaganda tools at their disposal” to convince their citizens that continuing the war by supporting Ukraine is the only way they to save their country, he said.

Hungary, on the other hand, “was pushed into two wars it didn’t want to get involved in during the 20th century, and it lost the majority of its territory and inhabitants as a result,” Orban said. So the government’s opposition to be dragged into the war “is an axiom that bears no compromise or relenting. We must keep that position as it is in Hungary’s interest to do so,” he said.