My Fellow Hungarians,
Please accept my salutations and deep respect on the day that Hungarian freedom was born.
The fifteenth of March eighteen forty-eight is a red-letter day in Hungarian history. This day saw the rebirth of a nation, which – surrounded, and assailed from outside and in – set out to shape its destiny, without an effective army, adequate industrial base or great powers for allies. The Hungarians of ’48 stood up firmly and bravely for the nation’s demands: an accountable government and equality before the law instead of imperial tyranny, a national bank instead of financial dependence, and freedom instead of oppression. They knew that freedom and independence are not garments tailored by others to fit our measurements, but are developed from within, like the peel of an apple or the shell of a snail; they therefore built a country for themselves from the notions native to our land and the Hungarian people’s desire for freedom.
The one hundred and sixty-eight years which have passed since then have simply served to reinforce this idea in us. Today, as then, we wish to adjust our laws and daily lives to our concept of freedom here, in this basin girdled by the Carpathian Mountains. Today, as then, we seize every opportunity to ensure that no one should be allowed to challenge our national symbols, that no one should be allowed to call into question our constitutional rights, that no one should be allowed to deprive us of our schools, and that no one should be allowed to conscript our sons and send them to foreign wars. We seek to serve the cause of Hungarian freedom and the survival of the Hungarian nation in the manner we learnt from the Youths of March: with one heart, one soul and one will.
Long live Hungarian freedom, long live Hungary!
Budapest, March 15, 2016
Viktor Orbán
PRIME MINISTER OF HUNGARY