Orbán: EU project of peace
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.
