FM: Progressive liberalism is not the only direction

Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said the liberal mainstream cannot accept that “progressive liberalism is not the only progressive direction."

In The Bold Truth about Hungary podcast on Sunday, the minister told Zoltán Kovács, the state secretary for international communications and relations, that Hungary has had a “patriotic, Christian Democratic, anti-mainstream and non-progressive government in office over the past twelve and a half years," which, in addition, is successful, which the liberal mainstream cannot digest. “As long as we break investment records each year, with firms coming from countries with which we are on explicitly bad political terms to invest billions of euros here, we are safe,” Szijjártó said. Business people will make important decisions based on facts “rather than on the basis of what foreign papers write about the Hungarian government”, he said. Minister Szijjártó insisted that Hungary’s economic and political positions were “extremely strong” in countries outside Europe. He said the government had “never discriminated between investors” as long as they observed Hungarian laws. He mentioned as an example China’s Huawei “the presence of which company in Hungary was much criticised, but at the installation in Budapest of the 5G system operated by Vodafone, a non-eastern company, it turned out that the required infrastructure had been built by Huawei”.

Referring to the war in Ukraine, Minister Szijjártó said “the era of cheap Russian gas in Europe is clearly over”, with ties severed between Russia and the European Union “one after the other”, adding that “I am not sure this could be remedied in our lifetime”. He said it was important “to make clear that energy is a not a political or ideological issue, but a question of facts”, adding that safe supplies to Hungary could not be guaranteed without Russian sources. “We have always managed to maintain a pragmatic relationship with Russia which enables us to frankly tell them what we think … and we usually tell them that we condemn the war,” Szijjártó said. “The war is causing a lot of damage to us, to Europe. And the sanctions are also causing a lot of difficulties and damage to us, therefore the best scenario would be ending the war and starting negotiations, but without dialogue and open communication channels it is not possible,” the foreign minister said.

Watch the full episode of The Bold Truth About Hungary here: