Máté Gerhardt: Hello everyone. Today’s guest on Patrióta Extra is Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary. Prime Minister, welcome to the studio. Thank you very much for accepting our invitation.
Thank you for inviting me.
Let’s get straight down to business. We’ve prepared for a lot of topics. In the last few days, the socialist-liberal government in Germany has collapsed, the Government in France has fallen, and with Trump’s victory, the global elite has suffered a historic defeat. You spoke about this – about a world system change – in Tusványos. Can we say that this world system change has begun, that David is succeeding in taking on Goliath?
If we don’t want to get bogged down in analysing the day-to-day events, but want to look behind – or above – the processes, we see two processes that need to be separated from each other. The first is what you’ve just called the world system change, and the second is a change within the Western world. So if we talk about a world system change, we can safely say that since the Chinese were admitted to the WTO [World Trade Organization], the Asian economies have been developing at a speed that defies all previous assumptions, and the contribution of the Asian continent to the world economy as a whole has dramatically increased at the expense of the Western continents. So the direction in the flow of wealth, money and value in the world has been reversed. The result is that the East is getting stronger, Asia is getting stronger, and the West is getting weaker in relative terms – not in absolute terms, but in relative terms. And the ability to contribute to GDP, to the world’s total output, will sooner or later be reflected in military capabilities, it will be reflected in diplomatic capabilities, and it will gradually transform the world. This is one of the processes, in the light of which one should interpret everything that’s happening. The other process is that since the end of the Cold War – I’m talking about the early 1990s – I’ve personally witnessed the struggle between two political and intellectual agendas in the Western world, and I can tell you this as a matter of personal experience. One of these is the liberal agenda – now called “progressive liberal” to distinguish it from the traditional liberalism of the 19th century. So this is the progressive liberal movement. And the other is the patriot movement, sometimes called Christian democrats or a variety of other names. But the point is that today we can safely say that there are liberals on one side and patriots on the other. What’s happening now is that in Europe, in the Western world, in the internal struggle, the liberals are losing and the patriots are winning. In this respect the biggest victory – the biggest victory of the patriots over the liberals – is that of US President Donald Trump. This is where the two processes meet, and at the same time it’s also a chance for the Western world to reassert itself and define its place in the world system change. We must recognise that in the end the two processes will come together, but they’re really two things with distinctly different natures.
Yes, how does this manifest itself in the EU, for example? We see that the French government and the German government have both failed because of the economy, because of economic difficulties, because of social tensions, because of unemployment, because of migration, because of many things. It’s clear that this kind of transformation is inevitable, even if they don’t really want to acknowledge it.
If we interpret what’s happening in Western Europe in terms of the second process, that of liberals versus patriots in the Western world, then we can say that the liberals’ last bridgehead, stronghold or citadel – to which they’ve been pushed back – is Brussels. This is the land of Mordor, the Dark Lord has withdrawn behind his battlements here, and now it’s the only place where liberals can be found. And there too you can see that since the Patriots for Europe – that’s us – were formed, the patriots have won wherever there have been elections in Europe – from the Czech Republic, say, to Austria or the Netherlands. So sooner or later Europeans will have to bring about a patriotic political change. In the meantime, in the other context, which is about where the West will find its place in the world and what Europe can add to it, if a change in competitiveness isn’t implemented urgently, the performance of European countries – of Western European countries – will continue to decline within the overall performance of the world economy, and these countries will be marginalised. Today they’re facing very serious problems. This isn’t the subject of our discussion, but let’s leave something for next year, or open that up next year. We’ll also come to the big question of whether, with problems of the magnitude that they’re facing in the West today, whether those political systems will succeed in finding answers within the framework of democracy. There’s been a century in which they failed.
Yes, because looking at, say, EU processes, looking at Brussels, which we talk a lot about here at Patrióta, analysing what’s been happening there, the plenary debate in Strasbourg, for example, spoke for itself. And, of course, Manfred Weber has also been mentioned very frequently. He’s created a kind of pact, a “Weber Pact”. But it can be seen that this kind of pro-migration charter, pro-war charter, would place extremely heavy fetters on those Member States that are striving for autonomy, patriotism or sovereignty. What’s the answer to this?
The fact is that, with the victory of the American Republicans, migration policy is finished; so in the Western world pro-migration policy is dead, gender policy is dead, and I hope that the days of pro-war policy are also numbered. That’s one thing. On the other hand, the last elections in the European Parliament resulted in a pro-change majority. So, according to our calculations, the winners in seventeen of the twenty-seven Member States were political forces that wanted change – including the People’s Party, the European People’s Party of Weber, which stood on that platform. But then when the results came out they decided to do what they always do: they went to the Left and made a deal with the Liberals, the Greens and the Socialists. This is how they ended up betraying a large part of the European electorate. This is the driving force that’s pushing us patriots forward today; because voters who didn’t want to see this from the European People’s Party, but who wanted change, are coming over from there to line up behind us. Now, a really interesting and intellectually exciting question is raised by the fact that while President Trump is entering and the Russians are pushing forward, the Liberals, the Greens, the Socialists and the People’s Party want to carry on doing what they’ve been doing up to now. There’s a new reality, but they’re still thinking within the logic of the old reality. This is why they’ve concluded this pact, which later on I think will have significance in political history – because for the first time in Brussels there’s now a governing party and an opposition. Brussels is governed by certain parties which have concluded a pact. The parties of the Hungarian opposition are all part of that pact, because they belong with those international parties; and on the other side there’s opposition to Brussels, led by us patriots.
Yes, if we look at the figures, this is always one of the key issues: over the course of five years the war in Ukraine should be supported with 0.25 per cent of the GDP of each Member State. If we look at this, it would cost Hungary around 200 billion forints a year; translating this into families, it would amount to 100,000 forints.
What you’re talking about here is the pact that these European parties have concluded, with the participation of the Hungarian opposition.
And have they already concluded it?
This pact has been concluded in the European Parliament by the parliamentary groups, and it includes a commitment to gender – in other words they’ll pursue an anti-family policy. They’ll continue to support migration, they’ll continue to support the war with all their energy, and, as you’ve said, they’ll call on the Member States to contribute 0.25 per cent of their gross domestic product to this purpose. This means that we Hungarians would also be required to provide money – in other words, they want to take substantial sums of money from us. This is why I say that there’s Brussels and there’s the opposition to it – because we disagree with all that. We’re on the side from which President Trump comes. So we’re on the patriotic side of change in the Western world, and we’ll grind down the others in Europe. This will only be a matter of time, because it’s impossible for parties to be in power that are still stuck in the old ways, while Europe is crying out for change, while a new reality has emerged on the Russo–Ukrainian front, and while a new reality has emerged in the Western world. That won’t work. I can’t tell you exactly how the change will unfold, because I’m not clairvoyant, but it’s certain that we’ll get stronger, they’ll get weaker, and we’ll be in the majority in Brussels. This will only be a matter of time.
Yes, but how can you resist this pressure? One constantly reads about the sanctions, fines and legal judgments that Hungary is threatened with; so how, and for how long, can this wartime and economic pressure be resisted? After all, many people on the Right are asking themselves how long Brussels can keep this particular pressure up?
The pressure is easing now. As long as we were under pressure from Washington and Brussels at the same time, it was more difficult for me to answer this question, because I’d have to say that resisting is simply a matter of virtue. This has taken years from our lives. We can look back at what a difficult time we’ve had over the last three or four years, what a difficult period. But I think that we’ve managed to withstand this with good strategic calculation, resisting the pressure, fending off the attacks; we’ve dived under, we’ve toughed it out as József Antall would say, and now we’ve risen up and we’ll be the majority.
Yes, this toughing it out is something in itself, but, speaking about President Trump’s victory, it’s clear that you were the first European leader he met there, on his private estate, and you also spoke to Elon Musk: you spoke to the richest man in the world and the most powerful man in the world at the same time. What did you talk about? What kind of, say, economic transformation is in prospect? How will this affect Hungary? What will be the impact on the Western world, which you’ve mentioned?
Our story is an old one. So when the now victorious US President first entered the ring in 2015–16, Hungary was the only country supporting him, and I personally was the only European leader. That hasn’t changed since. So it’s an old story. It’s not that some kind of relationship has happened by chance in the last two or three days, years or months. Many, many years of work and many, many years of perseverance have gone into this. I’ve always believed that the processes I’ve just told you about are taking place, are happening. And I was also sure that, just as in politics, every process is embodied in people. We talk about processes, but it’s people who take action, they’re who we see. Their defeats and victories are the process itself. And I was sure that what has happened would happen. In this sense I’d say that I placed my bet based on form, and I was sure that President Trump would come back.
But nobody bet on that, Prime Minister. So when you first mentioned Trump’s name...
Yes, but it’s difficult for them because they’re not prime ministers, and I am.
Yes, but everyone was surprised by it, and at the time, the first time round, everyone was surprised when he won: they’d bet on Hillary Clinton, and they’d already produced a book predicting her victory. So what was the moment or what was the intuition that told you this?
I believe that although European and Western civilisation has jettisoned much of its Christian heritage, it’s still essentially a Christian culture. So in the long term people can’t be forced to accept certain things, unnatural things. And in America in the 2010s I already saw that what was happening there in the field of migration and gender could be successful, because with a lot of media hype many things can be forced down people’s throats. But it would be only a temporary success: sooner or later the balance of creation would be restored, it would swing back, and someone would come along who would say: “Well, that’s enough of this clown show, thank you very much, we want to live normal lives.” And it’s not going to be about ideology or a programme, but it’s going to be a person who says, “They’re forcing so much nonsense on us, let’s stop this; because it’s not just that we don’t like it and that it makes us feel uncomfortable, but that it’s also bad for us economically.” This is what happened in America. So I wasn’t surprised by the victory in 2016 either.
But the big question is what Hungary can gain from Trump’s victory. Because this is a key issue for us – not just diplomatically, but also economically.
In the short term, three things are for sure, and they’re economic. I’m not saying that the Hungarians have won the lottery jackpot, that will come later; but for now we’ve picked four of the five numbers for a jackpot. The fact is that in the United States the Democratic administration refused to conclude a double taxation agreement with Hungary, as an extension of the agreement that was in force up until then. The consequence of this is that while the United States used to be the second largest investor in Hungary, which is good for them and good for us, it’s now slipped down to fourth place. What will happen now is that the new government and Hungary will conclude this agreement. Secondly, we’ve been suffering from a discriminatory visa policy. For political and ideological reasons, the Hungarians have been penalised in visa policy. This will also end. And thirdly, American investors will arrive. I’m working to ensure that these will be investors in the future of modern technology in Hungary, bringing technology, jobs and capital to Hungary. These three things will certainly happen. And then the transformative effect of this Republican victory on the whole world will be understood and felt by all of us – not in the first few months, but in a year or two. The world will be more normal.
And the war? Can this development really bring a ceasefire, say, or peace? Well, Trump has talked a lot about this. So the big question is that as long as Joe Biden keeps throwing out the leftovers, if you like, and keeps giving Ukraine all the weapons and money he can, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to achieve the kind of peace or ceasefire that would give any hope of them stopping hostilities.
When we’re talking about war, it’s worth remembering that the West – America and Europe together – have spent around 310 billion dollars. To understand how much this is, according to our latest statistics in 2023 or 2024 Hungary’s GDP was around 210 billion dollars. This means that so far the West has spent one and a half times more on this war than Hungary can even produce. This shows what a huge amount it is. It’s quite obvious that the Americans will no longer put in their share, they’ll no longer pay it. Whether they’ll pay some of it – and how much – will be a matter for all sorts of wrangling; but what’s certain is that there will be a fundamental change in the internal distribution between America and Europe of the burden of paying out the money needed for the war in Ukraine. And I think that we Europeans – those of us who have been giving money, because we Hungarians haven’t been giving money – won’t be able to cope with this. And if there’s no money, there’s no war. If there’s no war, then we need negotiations, peace negotiations. And the first step in peace negotiations is a ceasefire. This is what I’m waiting for. I think it will happen.
Yes, and of course this would also be an extremely important step from an economic point of view. You’ve said that 2025 could be a fantastic year economically, so we can move forward, families can move forward, and businesses can move forward. What exactly can we expect, and who will be the main winners from this new economic policy?
How can we picture this? Think of the fact that there’s been a war in progress for over a thousand days in a neighbouring country, consuming huge amounts of money and destroying the European energy market. Think of the fact that the war has caused huge energy price rises, that the sanctions have exacerbated the situation, that this has put up the price of everything, and that for the past three years we’ve been living in a period of high inflation. Think of the fact that this has hit everyone: every national economy, every country, every family. All the while in economic terms we’ve had this dense, gloomy, threatening, grey cloud of war hanging over our heads. This is how we’ve been living for the past thousand days. Our economic policy has adapted to this. But what burden has this placed on Hungary? In 2022 the price of energy purchased by Hungary was about 7 billion euros, and the following year – when the sanctions pushed up prices – it was 17 billion euros. This means that we lost 10 billion euros in one year. This is what in the old communist days used to be called “a deterioration in the terms of trade”. Economists can remember that. This is what’s happened to us. This is 10 billion euros – 4 trillion forints – which flew out of the country in a single year: whoosh! Just because of the war. Now, in our view this is over, this thousand days of war is over. We picture 2025 as a year of peace, and we’ve prepared a budget for this year of peace. So out with the old and in with the new – and what’s needed is a new economic policy. This new economic policy is the basis of the budget that the Hungarian parliament is adopting, which really foreshadows a fantastic year ahead. There will be a wage explosion. Just today I was reading in international analyses that wage growth in Hungary next year will be the highest in the European Union, as already shown in the figures for this year’s third and fourth quarters. We’ll have strong economic growth, and we’ll do things that we haven’t done before: the Sándor Demján Programme; capital grants for businesses; a completely new housing support programme; and now we can support young workers, having only supported students so far. So the year ahead of us will be very different from the past thousand days that we’ve successfully survived.
Yes, but if we look at the economic environment, putting aside the political environment, the EU is on the brink. And Mario Draghi, who’s produced a report – and he’s a very serious authority…
He knows what he’s talking about.
...and he has keen insight. Yes, he has keen insight, blaming bad decisions in Brussels for the fact that Europe is so far behind, for its competitiveness having fallen so far behind. It’s in Hungary’s vital interest to remain in this circle while pursuing an independent economic policy, so that it can somehow break this bad streak. But how can it achieve this? Will the competitiveness declaration, for example, which has just been adopted here, be enough?
No, no! It’s worth thinking about what you’ve said, but it might be a venture beyond our means. So I haven’t thought of it – or we, our team, haven’t thought of it. Of course we’re trying to help them change, and – even in times of floundering governments like those of Germany and France – to bring something to fruition, such as the Budapest Competitiveness Declaration. But if we were to build next year on this, we’d be building our house on sand. So we have another plan. The Hungarian economy’s performance won’t be good as a result of improvement in Europe’s performance. It will be good even if Europe doesn’t improve, because we have two well-developed resources – financial resources – which up until now have been hidden, but are now revealed. The first is that next year, in 2025, the interest rate on loans taken out earlier will be significantly reduced. In figures this means that while in 2024 we were paying around 4 per cent – or maybe 4.5 per cent – of our GDP in interest on loans taken out earlier, in 2025 this will come back down by 1 per cent to 3.5 per cent. This is how much financial leeway we’ll have. On the other hand, when we saw that this wartime period was beginning, we realised that we not only had to survive, but we also had to quietly start investments that would come to fruition after the war, and that would give us a flying start. This is why we launched huge-scale investments, industrial investments, which recently the Opposition has been fiercely attacking – but now perhaps in an overtly silly way, because next year, in 2025, these large factories will be in production. So a BMW factory will be starting production. The largest European plant of a Chinese battery manufacturer – the world’s biggest – will come on stream. In Szeged, a factory for the world’s biggest electric car manufacturer will start production. And other smaller investments will come on stream in 2025. So the reduction in interest charges on the loans taken out earlier and the industrial capacity coming on stream will provide the financial backing to deliver the budget plan for 2025, for a fantastic year.
You’ve mentioned the Opposition, and you’ve said that you’ve always had horrendous opponents, who lie morning, night and day; but perhaps not until now has there been anyone who’s openly stated that we must give up our sovereignty, and that they want to create a puppet government in Brussels. This was also said there in that particular plenary debate. What is clear, however, is that the Right has been confronted with an opponent that until now hasn’t been very visible or enjoyed such strong support. How can one fight such an opponent? In what way can one fight such an opponent?
The substance hasn’t changed, but the form has – and in Hungarian politics this is a surprise. Of course, since 2010 Brussels has always wanted a change of government in Hungary – with an increasing level of intensity and determination. Not only in Hungary, by the way, but also everywhere there have been governments – for example in Poland – that are patriotic, opposing Brussels’ centralising ambitions: let’s say Brussels’ liberal, bureaucratic, centralising ambitions. And they’ve always been trying to overthrow these governments – including us, including me. For every election I can tell you exactly where, when and how they tried to achieve this. We’ve always fended them off. What we’re seeing now is a continuation of the same thing. The actors constantly change. First they tried to smuggle Gordon Bajnai back in, if you remember him. Before him, we had Ferenc Gyurcsány. And then they thought that Ferenc Gyurcsány’s wife would be a good person to do it, so the Brussels bureaucracy gave her its full support. Now they’re trying to put the Tisza Party and Péter Magyar in this position. I think this is clear to everyone.
Yes, but the audience or community on the Right is waiting – or has been waiting – for a slightly stronger response.
Yes, because it is a question of style.
Yes, I’m talking about the face-off involving Tamás Menczer.
Yes, but this is a question of style. So what I was saying earlier is that the substance of the matter hasn’t changed – indeed it’s becoming increasingly brazen. When I was there in the European Parliament to present the programme of the Hungarian Presidency, and Ursula von der Leyen and Manfred Weber presented Péter Magyar as the head of a future Brussels-backed government, as if they were his godparents. And they said that I would be out, and he would be in. They said this there. But of course there was an interlude, and the words which can actually be interpreted as the announcement of an intention in Brussels to overthrow the Hungarian government were ignored during the great panoply which everyone remembers. So the substance hasn’t changed. What you’re talking about is the apparel, the style, or the way in which politics is being conducted and implemented. This is indeed new. So even in the fiercest and worst of times, there was still some role for factuality. In the sphere of manners there were also boundaries that everyone thought were better not to cross. The type of aggressive bluster we see today – admittedly more outside Parliament – wasn’t unprecedented, but it just wasn’t common. What was that MP’s name? Péter Jakab – I remember when he waved bags of potatoes in my face.
He went up to you in Parliament...
...and said all kinds of things. So there was that, but it was kind of on the periphery, on the edge. Now it’s become the voice of opposition politics. It’s this aggressive bluster. And indeed normal people, all people of good conscience – whom you could say are of the Right, although perhaps that’s not entirely fair to those of good conscience on the Left – have either been alarmed by this whole phenomenon, or are waiting for something to change. Because this can’t continue like this.
Yes, some people’s hackles have been raised, but that’s far from the political intention, so one can’t always bring these two things to fruition, because one can’t always do exactly what the voters want.
Well, although I hope that you’re more fortunate, I think that there are aggressive hotheads like this in most workplaces, and in families too. Let’s face it, sometimes someone comes along, and these really unpleasant people do occur; and anyone who’s ever met one knows that you can’t talk to them straight, reason with them, or appeal to reason or convictions. You can only talk to them in their own language. That’s the way they are, that’s the kind of people they are. And when they get into politics this is what happens – although it does no one any good. When you hear these harsh exchanges, one does have a sense of surrogate shame, doesn’t one? Because after all, at least we on the Right are idealists. We think of ourselves as not being like that. Well, after all we are! We’re not different, because that’s us too. And if these people gain a position in politics and bring in this fighting style, because it’s always the challenger who chooses the fighting style, then the governing party – which is responsible for the state of the country – must have an answer to it. We have a large political community, and we have an answer to every challenge. We need to be able to respond to challenges with every type of weapon. We it comes to Mother Teresa, it’s one, and when it comes to stopping an aggressive hothead, it’s another. And this must be dealt with. But we’ve got people for everything, and so we’ve handled this, too.
If we look ahead, 2025 will be a year of preparation, and 2026 will be the year of the election. And this is why there are many of us here who don’t want to give up even a little sovereignty. What do you think patriots, patriotic Hungarian people, should do next year? What should we do next year? How should we prepare?
There’s no such thing as the renunciation of even a tiny amount of sovereignty. The essence of sovereignty is loyalty – loyalty to your country. There can be no such thing as renouncing even a little loyalty: you’re either loyal or disloyal. If you renounce your loyalty to your country, you’ve yielded sovereignty to someone else. You’ve become disloyal, you’ve committed betrayal, you’ve given up. This is why there can be no such thing as giving up a little of it. We won’t give up anything. Hungary is a community and state that is one thousand one hundred years old, independent, sovereign, and capable of leading its own life. We’re not giving up anything. The 2026 election must be won. I hope that will happen. I’m confident that our work in 2025 will be decisive. If the new economic policy that we’ve just announced – of economic neutrality, our new economic policy, our action plan of twenty-one programme points – is successful, then everyone will see that the Government has the answer to the post-war period and, to paraphrase Donald Trump, how to make Hungary great again. And if there’s governability and there’s performance, then there will be electoral success. It’s true that governmental success alone won’t bring electoral success, and many hundreds of thousands of national, Christian and civic-minded people will have to work very hard to achieve it; but the achievements of our political community so far will, I believe, continue in 2026. I look forward to 2025 and 2026 with great optimism and high expectations.
Prime Minister, thank you very much for this interview, and thank you again for accepting our invitation. And, of course, on behalf of myself and my colleagues, I wish you a Blessed, Peaceful and Happy Christmas. Thank you for being here.
May your family also have a Peaceful Christmas.
Thank you. This was Patrióta Extra. Thank you very much for your attention. Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel, as we look forward to more very interesting interviews and discussions next year. Thank you for being here with me. Goodbye everyone.