The prime minister did not mince words when asked about the debate scheduled next week in the European Parliament on the rule of law in Hungary. “It will be a Soros-style session, election rally and campaign event,” something that he refuses to take part in. “In five months, this Parliament won’t exist any longer. This is an outgoing edition, a new Parliament is coming,” he said.
Responding to the European Commission’s latest steps in the infringement procedure against Hungary, PM Orbán said it is becoming more and more obvious that George Soros is trying to expand his influence in the European Commission. The most recent evidence for this, he said, is that Frans Timmermans, the leftist nominee for the position of Commission President, is one of Soros’s people.
Later in the interview, the Prime Minister highlighted that the EP plan to triple funding for pro-migration NGOs is “perfectly consistent with the 6th point of the Soros plan,” exploiting NGOs to promote illegal migration. On the planned new EU mechanism that would link EU funding to compliance with certain “rule-of-law requirements” PM Orbán said that, fortunately, for this the Parliament would need the unanimous approval of the Council.
That “won’t happen as long as I am the prime minister,” he added.
Turning to the national consultation on the protection of families, more than 1.3 million people, said PM Orbán, took the trouble to read and consider the questions in the national consultation and then sent them back to share their opinion with the government. This shows, he said, that “when it comes to important issues, and we listen and pay attention to the people, we get their answers.”
“We should find the key points in which we agree,” he added, “and we should formulate the government’s decisions according to them.”
Children and child protection remain important for Hungarian people, the PM said, drawing upon the outcome of the national consultation, but its integration within Hungary’s legal framework is fragmented. “This is why I asked Gergely Gulyás, the minister heading the Prime Minister’s Office, to come up with a concept that includes in a unified framework all the challenges of modern-day child protection and the possible government responses to them,” he said.
“One thing is clear, even if we have demographic problems,” the PM said, commenting on the general attitude of Hungarians toward the problem of demographic decline, “Hungarian people do not want to solve them through immigration but through more efficient family policy.”
The prime minster added that the government has already drafted “long and very expensive” action plan to boost support for young families, the details of which he hopes to reveal February 10 during his “State of the Nation” address.
Turning toward the end of the interview to the subject of Hungary’s economic growth, PM Orbán said that from a foreign investment perspective, Hungary ranks among the top ten countries in the world. The goal in the coming years, he said, is to surpass the EU’s average GDP growth by 2 percent in order to increase competitiveness and further raise living standards in the country.