Péter Csermely: Prime Minister, unfortunately this discussion cannot begin with anything other than the Magdeburg atrocity.
Before the migration invasion in Europe, nothing like this happened. Since then, however, it’s happened repeatedly. Let us thank God that we don’t have to experience such things. Preventing further attacks is a task only for countries where migrants have been allowed in. Where they haven’t been allowed in, there can be only one conclusion: they must not be allowed in, period. I don’t know which is harder: not letting them in; or, once you’ve let them in, protecting yourself. Fortunately we Hungarians had the sense and the courage to say “no” in time. If you get it wrong, they’re in, and from that point on another world begins. The Germans are already living in that other world.
Germany and France are suffering from the dual grip of political turmoil and economic crisis, which is affecting the whole of Europe, but there’s no escape from it. Do you see any signs that this could change?
This is just the beginning. America and Europe have collectively spent around 300 billion euros on the war – money that could have been used to rapidly raise living standards across the whole of Europe. We could have brought the entire Balkans up to the level of European development. We could have stopped migration, we could have built a whole new European defence system. But that money has been burned. The result? A fifth of Ukraine’s territory under occupation, hundreds of thousands of people killed, hundreds of thousands more crippled, hundreds of thousands more wounded, hundreds of thousands more widowed and orphaned. And in the meantime, millions have fled Ukraine, whose infrastructure, transport and energy systems have been devastated; and the country is incapable of sustaining itself economically for the foreseeable future.
Have you ever had a more difficult year than this one?
In my profession there are no easy years. It’s true, however, that there has never been such an unfortunate period. In the western half of the world there are several leaders in power at the same time who are impractical, possessed by dangerous ideas, and incapable of defending their own countries. Within a year of the 2020 election, which was obviously rigged to deprive Donald Trump of the presidency, Angela Merkel – a strong and stable German chancellor – was gone, and France’s complex political system began to show its uglier face. And it was at this time that we entered into a military conflict with Russia that was beyond our capabilities. The stars have never been so unfavourable, and the four years that have passed since then have been the most difficult since I was blown into political life by the winds which swept communism away.
One of the stars has now shone for you: Donald Trump is back, and your personal relationship is excellent. But does this mean anything positive for Hungary? Because the bad relationship with the US administration so far has had negative consequences.
The foreign policy attitude of a healthy-minded country is to make friends. Let there be as many countries in the world as possible that have an interest in the success of the Hungarians. The new US president likes Hungary. The Chinese president has visited two countries in the European Union: France and Hungary. The President of Türkiye is our friend, the President of Russia is a plain-dealing partner, and the Prime Minister of Israel is our good friend. This is almost without precedent in the history of Hungarian diplomacy. Spinning these plates at the same time – so that none of them falls and their conflicts with one another don’t damage their relations with us – is a complicated matter, but it’s not impossible. The reason we need to gather friends around the world is so that Hungarians, all Hungarians, can benefit from this in a tangible way. In relation to America, this means that in the last four years there has been no double taxation treaty between the two countries; thus America, which used to be the second largest investor in Hungary, has suddenly dropped to fourth place. This has also been a serious loss for Hungary. The Hungarians will benefit significantly from a fair visa system and a double taxation treaty between our two countries, and there will be strong US capital investment in Hungary. In addition, the world will be a safer place, we’ll be moving closer to peace, perhaps even achieving it, and the huge amount of ideological nonsense that has proliferated around the world will be cut back with a pair of shears.
In Europe, especially in Brussels, Donald Trump has not won. In the European Parliament, however, the Patriots for Europe group has been formed. This is a great political achievement, but they’ve not been able to gain a foothold, they’ve been barred from all positions by the People’s Party and the Socialists. Do you see an opportunity for further growth?
Since 1990, after the fall of communism, the Western world has seen a new kind of political struggle. The liberals have been building an international world government and a progressive world order, while the opposing patriots insist on a world order organised on the basis of nations. Now, with Donald Trump’s victory, the patriots have a chance to turn the tide. The most important thing, of course, has been that the European patriots have assembled and organised themselves. Until you get together with like-minded people, proclaim your programme and raise the flag, all you can do is dream. The second most important factor is that the patriots have won in America. Donald Trump is a patriot, and the Republican Party – since the incoming president transformed it – is a patriotic party. This will be reflected in the cooperation between America and Europe. As far as the situation in Europe is concerned, we’ve been strengthened by the American victory, but we’re not in the majority, and so the fight goes on. We have a battle plan on how to build cooperation with European conservatives, and how to make it clear to the member parties of the European People’s Party that the true Christian democratic Right and its tradition is with the patriots and not with them. First we want to redraw the map of European parties, and then we want to take control of the European Commission, by having a majority in the European Parliament. These are our ambitions. It will certainly take a few years to implement, but a patriotic victory would open up opportunities and prospects for European nations and citizens that are worth working for.
Hungary’s EU Presidency is over. In what ways do you think that what you’ve brought to the table has differed from previous EU Presidencies?
My motto is that you can never be smart enough on your own. This time I asked my older, long-standing friends what they suggested the Hungarian Presidency should be like. The most persuasive advice I got was from former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who said that Hungarians should decide whether they want a bureaucratic Presidency or a political Presidency. “If you want no more than a pat on the shoulder in the salons of Europe”, he said, “you too should say that fifty-eight legislative dossiers are open, and you’re taking a step forward in each one of them. Or you can give Europe a political Presidency, because there are burning issues on the agenda, and you want to solve them.” But, Sarkozy warned, “If you choose this, everyone will attack you, because these are the issues that are conflictual, contentious, and therefore divisive.” The first of these is the war. If we were to run a political Presidency of the EU, we would have to start with peace and a peace mission. The second is Schengen enlargement: Romania and Bulgaria. The third is the Western Balkans, which should have been admitted to the European Union a long time ago, but enlargement to include it had stalled. The fourth is that the European economy is being destroyed. Then there’s the future of European agriculture. I sat down with my ministers and colleagues, we assessed our resources and our courage, and then we took the path of a political Presidency. Who remembers what kind of EU Presidencies we had before? No one. We’ve launched a peace mission, we’ve succeeded in enlarging the Schengen Area, we’ve advanced Balkan integration, we’ve created a consensus among agriculture ministers, and – by adopting the Budapest Declaration on Competitiveness – we’ve agreed on a plan to save the European economy. The Hungarian Presidency will be remembered for a long time.
Let’s return home to Hungary. The Hungarian economy has been unable to find its feet. Since 2010 the leitmotif of your government has been that Hungary and the Hungarians have made a step forward every year – larger or smaller, but every year. Are you worried about the current situation?
Of course we want to move forward every year. But there are years when it’s a success if we stay alive, and a success if we don’t slip backwards. Wartime years are like that. Hungary has survived the three years of the war. We tried to overtake on the bend and to some extent even turn the war situation in our favour – but no one in Europe has managed to do that. Everyone has been badly affected by the war, every economy. It’s a major achievement that Hungary hasn’t sunk back and found itself in the same condition – especially in terms of competitiveness – as most European economies. So now, when the war has come to an end, we can make a flying start. You can make a flying start if you’ve done the preparation, the groundwork, you’ve warmed up, you know which lane you’ll be in, and you know when the starting pistol will be fired. We’re prepared, and we’ll make a flying start in 2025. There will be a return to the politics of the peacetime years, instead of the politics of war, and we’ll have great economic successes again.
And if the war doesn’t end?
The war will end in 2025. Either it will be brought to an end by peace negotiations, or one of the warring parties will be destroyed.
What’s also new this year is that Fidesz has been forced into the kind of contest it hasn’t seen in a long time, with the emergence of a new challenger: Péter Magyar and the Tisza Party. Did this surprise you? Do you see them as a threat, or do you see them as being like previous competitors?
A prime minister should be concerned with the people and the country, not with the Opposition. I can say this much, though: compared with the current one [Péter Magyar], Ferenc Gyurcsány was an Adenauer. Otherwise, competition is good: if you don’t compete, you get complacent and you start thinking you can do your job by rote. In politics that’s life-threatening. I’ve always watched with interest when life has presented us with a succession of new challenges. Whether what’s happening in the opposition sphere is good for the country is another question. It’s certainly good for the country if political debates are about facts and important issues – preferably conducted in an intelligent way, and offering solutions. If, on the other hand, the aggressive bluster that the new opposition strategy has brought with it becomes dominant, then that’s certainly not good. But someone who complains about the tactics his opponent uses against him is a weak competitor. There’s no question about the fact that they’re trying everything. This time Brussels has appointed representatives to replace us who have chosen this weapon. We’ll fight them too. But despite all the shape-shifting, there’s one thing that remains constant. In 2010 Hungary decided that it would not go down the path that Brussels was proposing to it, because then we’d be ruined. That was also the lesson for me after the great financial crisis. This was further reinforced by the migration crisis, which made it even clearer that we mustn’t follow the same path as Brussels. This was confirmed by Covid, when instead of curing people, the EU bureaucrats were more concerned with preventing non-Western vaccines from entering the European pharmaceutical market. And now this has intensified, because if we’d gone along with Brussels we’d be up to our neck in the war. We’re a member of the EU; this is something which must be preserved, and we must also seek cooperation with Brussels. But since 2010 we’ve been keenly aware that Hungary must not follow the path determined by Brussels. We mustn’t allow Brussels bureaucrats to dictate what happens in Hungary. Because then we’ll become poor, our economy will become less competitive, migrants will come in, gender madness will spread, and we’ll end up in a war. The bureaucracy in Brussels is big and powerful, and it has control over a lot of money and resources. Anyone who deviates from their line has to constantly fight for their sovereignty. This is what Hungary is doing. But if we hadn’t done so, Hungarian families would have to pay three or four times as much for energy as they do now, the scenes from Magdeburg would be happening in Hungarian cities, and the 300 billion euros that the West has sent to Ukraine would include our money. Meanwhile we wouldn’t know how to get out of a war that’s impossible to win.
Prime Minister, what’s your message to Hungarians for Christmas 2024?
Dare to believe in the future. It’s hard to believe that the coming year will be good, even fantastic, after three years of brutal war in a neighbouring country, with failed Brussels policies, with a sanctions policy that has damaged economies, with years of high inflation due to Brussels’ bad response to the war. “I’ll believe it when I see it”, say the Hungarians. Well, my wish is that they see it.