Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said that without its nations, Europe would lose its spiritual and cultural identity.
The prime minister made the declaration while addressing a European People’s Party (EPP) congress in Helsinki on Thursday.
“Europe will either be a Europe of nations or it will cease to exist,” PM Orbán told the congress ahead of a vote on the lead candidate for the post of European Commission president.
The prime minister said that the “accession of central European nations have made Europe more peaceful, stronger and richer”. The continent’s strength has always been based on strong nations, he added.
PM Orbán accused the liberals, socialists and greens of wanting a rootless Europe devoid of its spiritual and psychological identity. “Our vision is a Europe with 27 faces, one that is Christian and democratic simultaneously,” he said.
The prime minister called the EPP “a party of victors” which preferred keeping its feet on the ground rather than championing world-redeeming ideologies. However, he said the situation has now changed.
Over the past few years, the EPP has given the leadership of Europe, so it has to take responsibility for “failure to keep Britain in the union and the migrants outside it.” While in 2011, sixteen member states were governed by EPP parties, now that number is down to six, he said. “No wonder our confidence has been shaken.”
The prime minister said that to return to the path to victory, the EPP should restore its unity, find its roots again and proclaim the “renaissance of Christian democracy”.