Gergely Gulyás, Head of the Prime Minister's Office, said Hungary is "liberal in the classical sense of the word".
During a talk at the Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Budapest on Wednesday evening, Gulyás argued that, "unlike Brussels", Hungary did not restrict the freedom of speech.
Hungarian public life makes room for diversity of opinion, "but we see the exact opposite of this in Brussels", Gulyás said, insisting that "Brussels is actually the one that is illiberal".
Asked by László Trócsányi, the university’s rector, how he thought Hungarians saw the European Union, Gulyás said he believed that like him, the Hungarian people had "a very bad opinion of the EU", arguing that there was nothing happening in the bloc that he considered to be right.
Gulyás, added at the same time, that this did not change the fact that Europe had to be a unified economic community in the global economic competition of the 21st century, which he said the EU could guarantee.