Following news of his appointment as State Secretary for International Communications at the Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister, Zoltán Kovács sat down with the reporters at conservative online portal Origo to talk about the role he is taking on and to discuss some of the most pressing challenges Europe has to face these days.
“What happened now is that because of the ever-increasing international attention on Hungary and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as a result of the upcoming European Parliamentary elections, the government considered it necessary that we focus on this particular field,” Kovács said, adding that they expect a “significant barrage of fire” directed at Hungary in the coming months. And Hungary needs to respond appropriately.
According to the state secretary, the kind of attention Hungary gets has changed over the last eight years and the work of the Orbán Government has become a point of reference for others. “We speak a language that European people have been awaiting for a long time,” Kovács said.
Responding to the question of whether he’ll now remain in the background, Kovács said that he regrets to inform all those who thought they got rid of him: he will continue the kind of proactive communication that became his trademark in recent years.
“The stakes at play in the EP elections are higher than ever before,” he warned, adding that the tone of the campaign is already “powerful”, and the nominations haven’t even started yet. He pointed out that certain forces in the European Parliament have the illegal migration at the top of their agenda.
On migration as a human right, he said that it’s like “opening a Pandora’s box” and all our previous efforts would then be for nothing.
In Kovács’s view, Western Europe has always looked down on Hungary and Central Europe. But now things seem to be changing, “and not only because it’s about time, but also as a result of strong economic performance in recent years,” the State Secretary said.