Orbán in parliament: ‘What the left has messed up…’

Olga Kálmán from DK wanted to know why Hungarian families do not receive the 100,000 forints as start-up aid at the beginning of the school year that the Hungarian state generously grants to Hungarians living abroad in the Carpathian Basin. Viktor Orbán saw this question as a shameful continuation of the infamous referendum at the end of 2004, when the left tried to tell voters horror stories about millions of economic migrants from Romania in order to divide Hungarians.

Orbán pointed out that families in the motherland receive far more subsidies and asked whether it wouldn’t be fairer if Hungarians living abroad received just as much money! Of course, there are legal and financial limits to this.

In Germany, in addition to tax breaks, there are free school books and free school meals. ‘What you are organising here is a propaganda campaign against the Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin, just like in the worst communist times,’ said the Prime Minister, outraged by the DK’s approach.

For the MSZP, party leader Imre Komjáthi asked whether Viktor Orbán would still use the slogan ‘Hungary is better’ to promote the country in the face of increasing poverty? The Prime Minister defended himself by referring to the infamous Bokros package (from 1995!), which brought the greatest demographic catastrophe to Hungary. ‘What the left messed up, we have to fix,’ declared Orbán, referring at the same time to Eurostat figures showing that the risk of poverty has fallen from 30% to 18% under his government.

The socialist opposition politician replied that apart from Romanians and Slovaks, ‘everyone is slowly passing us by’. He asked Orbán to pay more attention to the fate of Hungarians instead of trying to get involved in global politics. The prime minister countered: ‘Anyone who thinks the Romanians are losing out to us, I would ask them to move there. When they return, we can talk about our experiences.’

The head of Mi Hazánk also referred to the current deterioration in poverty statistics, for which he blamed the Orbán government’s misguided economic policy. László Toroczkai called on the Prime Minister to mingle with the people in disguise, as King Matthias once did, and then he would realise that this economic policy was not working.

Orbán was unable to pick out any questions from the speech, which is why he combined that it was about the economic situation and the prospects. ‘When we came to power in 2010, we decided to make Hungary big and strong, in contrast to Hungary’s enemies, who in 1920 decided that this country should be small and poor.’

In response, Toroczkai said that it may be true that Orbán and his people are getting richer, but ordinary citizens are not. Inflation had eaten up incomes, which was immediately denied by the prime minister, whose statistics show that real incomes only shrank in 2023.