Gergely Gulyás, the prime minister's chief of staff, said the Hungarian government has, in terms of ideology, "more friends in the US Republican Party than in Western Europe".
In his keynote speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Budapest, Gulyás said Republicans were “significantly closer” to the government’s approach because “the Western European Christian Democratic Right has accepted that directions are set out by the Left, most recently by the Greens, and they are trying to abide by those laws”. It is easy to offer an alternative, though, he said, and mentioned the Hungarian constitution as an example, which stipulates that “a father shall be a man, and a mother a woman”.
Hungary now has “clear and fundamental rules” such as promoting economic competitiveness and “offering everyone an opportunity to work”, he said. In 2010, the government abolished a system of benefits which “looked communist, especially from the US” and launched public works schemes. As a result of government measures an unemployment rate of 12 percent has now been reduced to 3.5 percent, with one million more people working now than a decade ago, he insisted.
Photo credit: MTI