Zsolt Törőcsik: Welcome to the Public Media Centre in Brussels, where my guest is Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Good morning.
Good morning.
The last twenty-four hours have been busy. The Peace March and commemorative event on 23 October, and then the EU summit here in Brussels. At the press conference after the summit, you said that Hungary wouldn’t send people, money or weapons to Ukraine. How long can this position be maintained? How much pressure was there yesterday to change it?
Yesterday was a tough day – it felt like it lasted forty-eight hours, not twenty-four. But the most important thing is that we had a beautiful and uplifting national holiday. Now everyone approaches the 23 October rallies from a political perspective, but in fact it’s a national holiday, and it was beautiful and uplifting, as we remembered the heroes of 1956, and how – even in the most difficult times – we were able to stand up for good causes and for ourselves. The whole event had such an uplifting atmosphere. We owe special thanks to the artists. It’s been a long time since I saw such a liberating and heartwarming celebration. I’m particularly pleased that someone has finally managed to translate into Hungarian the song written by the Italians about 1956 – the only one that’s suitable for singing. It’s “Avanti ragazzi di Buda, Avanti ragazzi di Pest”. Someone rewrote it, translated it, maybe Vajk Szente, and they orchestrated, added some great music. Communal singing is important, singing together opens hearts, but we’ve got out of that habit because, well, few of us go to church anymore, and that would help – and there’s no peacetime conscription anymore. When I was young we had to sing while marching, and singing together is a good thing. But these forms and opportunities have disappeared from people’s lives, so it’s important that our artists help us regain this ability – because, I repeat, a completely different relationship is created between two people when they’re able to sing the same thing. Singing popular old songs, which we only talk about as entertainment, is still so popular because it can bring people closer together. This is why I’m very grateful to the artists who were on stage, who graced the stage with beauty and talent, and to those who just came and demonstrated their moral and intellectual weight in support of 1956 and the Freedom Fight. It was the kind of event where one couldn’t help but feel moved. If I’d been a spectator, I’d certainly have been filled with emotion, but when one’s giving a speech, one’s job is not to become emotional, but to do one’s job. So it was a beautiful, but difficult, morning and early afternoon. And from there we came here to Brussels. By the time I got here, the house was already on fire: here in Brussels I saw reality coming down the tracks. This is true of the war, the financing of the war, and it’s also true of the European economy. Our agenda items included the Russo–Ukrainian war, competitiveness, housing issues in Europe, and, of course, some foreign policy issues. And the money has run out. To summarise the situation briefly, we listened to the President of the European Central Bank. This is always fascinating: it’s called the Euro Summit, when those in the eurozone regularly meet and listen to the President of the European Central Bank. Those of us who aren’t members of the eurozone have fewer opportunities to do so, but once or twice a year the President comes to us, or we’re invited to this summit, and then we get a deeper insight into the financial situation. And in the European economy the starting point is still that in 2026 – we’ve now heard the forecasts – economic growth in the eurozone will be 1 per cent, according to leaders, and the global average will be 2 per cent. Meanwhile the growth of those we compete with – the United States and China – will be higher than that. So it’s clear that for many years now the European Union has been performing worse than the rest of the world, and as a result economic difficulties are growing: there’s ever less money, while the EU is taking on ever more commitments – such as a war. And the money has run out. This is why, when I arrived, the atmosphere here was highly charged, with several prime ministers speaking out against some of the measures on the table in a tone that was quite unlike the Hungarian tone. These measures aren’t related to the war, but are independent of the war and are damaging the economy, slowing it down, and increasing bureaucracy. Yesterday they were mostly rebelling against decisions that the Commission wants to force on Member States, which would result in an 8–10 per cent increase in energy prices. Of course the poorer countries immediately announced that they wouldn’t accept this, but the problem of course is that the decisions on this – which we opposed – have already been made, and now these decisions have to be reviewed retrospectively. It’s always more difficult to review a decision than to avoid making a bad decision in the first place.
But if this is the economic situation, how will there be money to continue supporting Ukraine? Because, incidentally, yesterday the twenty-six countries reaffirmed their commitment to that.
Yes, but it’s happening in an increasingly negative atmosphere. I have the feeling that they’d like to be rid of that burden, but they’ve committed themselves to the war so deeply. Indeed they themselves have lured – and even pushed – Ukraine towards war, and in recent times they’ve even been the ones trying to thwart the American president’s attempts at peace. In Paris or Berlin, say, they’ve deceived their own citizens to such an extent with the tale that the Russians are coming and Uncle Putin will gobble them up before bedtime, that it’s very difficult to come back from this war psychosis and martial atmosphere and say, “Oh, sorry, the Russians don’t want to eat us up. We’re actually the stronger ones, not the Russians, there’s no real threat of them coming here and occupying European countries, and now we should stop the war and make peace.” That’s the opposite of what they’ve been saying so far. That’s not an easy thing to do. Politics is the kind of discipline in which, once you’ve set out on a particular track on major issues, you can’t just get depart from it without people asking you, “But up until now you’ve been saying the opposite, and we’ve suffered damage and losses because of it – so who’s responsible for this?” So losing a war or admitting the possibility of losing a war and therefore changing course is extremely complicated. That didn’t work for the Americans either: Biden and his team knew full well that they’d bungled things, but they couldn’t change course. If Donald Trump hadn’t come along, there would have been no change in American policy. America was able to extricate itself from this whole misguided policy because a new president came along who could say, “What’s happened has happened, someone else did it, now I’m here, I’m the new president, now we’re doing something different.” And people accept that from a new president. But here in Europe the situation is different. Here no new president has come to power in any of the major countries. So those who should review their policies to date are the ones who have made the mistakes.
Incidentally, they say that they also want peace, but they’d achieve this by strengthening and supporting Ukraine. At the same time, for example, it’s apparent from their statements over the past few days that they seem to derive satisfaction from the fact that no date has yet been set for the peace summit in Budapest. What’s the explanation for this mixed messaging?
I didn’t feel that way, because they too know that since Donald Trump became President of the United States, big things come about in as little as two days. When recently the Middle East peace summit was convened, which is a more complicated situation than the war in Ukraine and historically more burdensome, the decision was made on Saturday at noon, and by Monday afternoon the signatures were in paper and half the world was there. So meetings can be arranged in two or three days. This morning’s news is that the US president will meet the Chinese president. So here in Europe, too, they know full well that the peace summit is still on the agenda. At most it won’t happen in the coming week. The exact date is uncertain, but there’s no doubt that it will happen – everyone knows that the Russians will come to an agreement with the Americans. The only problem here, the problem for the Europeans, is that they’ve declared the Russian president to be a war criminal, even placing him in the same category as Beelzebub, and they have a problem meeting a Russian president. If I do something, there will be consequences. The American president has never done that, so he can meet the Russian president at any time. Europeans suffer from the fact that although we should also negotiate and everyone feels that a direct European–Russian summit is needed, how can this happen after what the Europeans have said and done? So if you don’t think ahead, if you get carried away by emotions, or only think in the short term, sooner or later you’ll pay the price. International politics is a dangerous business.
So there won’t be a peace summit or peace talks for the time being, but there was a Peace March, which preceded the 23 October commemoration event. What message did you bring to your colleagues here in Brussels from Kossuth Square and the Peace March?
Even if I don’t explicitly say it, every such persuasive, powerful – and, I might add, overwhelming – event conveys the message that Hungarians’ position, which I represent here, isn’t just the Prime Minister’s position or the Hungarian government’s: there is a people behind it. After all, we live in a democracy, and when a people decides something, say, in a referendum, as happened in our country, or in a consultation, as is currently happening, or at a huge mass gathering where certain things are said, then that has a different weight. So in such circumstances everyone feels that it’s pointless to pressure me, to put me under pressure, to corner me and bully me – first of all because I can take it; and secondly, even if I couldn’t take it, it wouldn’t lead to anything, because meanwhile a country’s population, a people itself, doesn’t want what the leaders of the Union here in Brussels want. And if they don’t want it, they’ll resist, if they have enough courage and strength. And the commemoration of 1956 is about the fact that Hungarians have enough courage, enough strength, enough energy, and we cannot be treated like a servant people.
At the commemoration yesterday you said that today we’re left with two choices: war or peace. Is the situation really that simple?
Yes, it’s that simple. If there were peace, then the economic outlook for the eurozone, the economic outlook for Europe, the possibility of growth would not be 1 per cent, but 3 or 4 per cent. Today it’s an obvious economic correlation that if there were no sanctions, if we weren’t spending our money on the war in Ukraine, if economic cooperation with Russia were restored, the European economy – including the Hungarian economy – would find itself in a completely different situation. So if there’s war, there’s no development. If there’s peace, there’s development. It’s that simple.
The dividing line between war and peace has also been drawn in domestic politics, referring to the relationship between the ruling party and the opposition. But at the same time, the opposition, the Tisza Party, are also saying that they too want peace. Why do you think they’re still pro-war?
The policy of the Hungarian opposition is determined by the European People’s Party. Everyone says what they want: of course my children used to say all sorts of things when they were little, but in reality they had masters, they had parents. The Hungarian opposition – both Tisza and DK [Democratic Coalition] – have masters, or rather parents, in the form of the European People’s Party and the Party of European Socialists. Both want war. So it’s quite obvious that the only instruction coming from Brussels, directed generally to the parties that support Brussels, is to support the centrally approved line. In Brussels the centrally approved line is the pro-war line. There’s only one group in the European Union today that’s pro-peace and anti-war, and that’s the Patriots. This battle is taking place here in Brussels. When the People’s Party clashes with the Patriots for Europe, it’s as if Tisza were arguing with Fidesz. It’s the same thing. And no matter what they say at home, I don’t think people will swallow this doublespeak. You have to come here to Brussels and follow the news: there’s a pro-war political majority here at the moment; DK belongs to the Socialists, Tisza to the People’s Party, and these two parties are the most committed to continuing the war – they don’t want to back down from the pro-war line. We’re the only ones here who want peace.
Let’s talk about another of the Tisza Party’s plans. Officially they’re talking about raising the lowest pensions, but there are economic experts associated with them who would tax pensions. If we look behind this, we see that pensioners paid taxes and contributions so that they could now receive their pensions. How would it affect social distribution and solidarity if they interfered with this system?
I’ve been participating in these debates for thirty years. I clearly remember the Bokros Package [of the Socialist government of the mid-1990s]. In Hungary there’s a school of thought that says that if the economy isn’t doing well, or if one wants certain groups – say banks and multinational companies – to be exempted from taxation, then there will be no revenue, there will be a shortfall, and this must be made up from somewhere. And so they’ll want to tamper with either the pension system or the tax system – after all, if you let the banks and the multinationals off the hook, you have to collect money from someone else. One option is to spend less on the family support system. Or, instead of the flat-rate income tax, which is the lowest – and, in my opinion, the best – tax system in Europe, you say that you’ll introduce a progressive tax system. This is the opinion of Tisza. Or, since there are so many pensioners, we’re talking about 2.5 million people, you can take money from them too – you can collect quite a lot of money there if you act against the pensioners. And so it comes up that we should tax pensions. These are all ridiculous ideas – they must be rejected in the strongest possible terms and forgotten. Not only does this go against social justice, but it also stirs up a hornet’s nest by interfering with the internal workings of the pension system, which it doesn’t even understand. I did something like that. Although we didn’t take it away, because it was the Socialists who took away the thirteenth month’s pension, what I did during our first term in office – between 1998 and 2002 – was not to increase everyone’s pension by the same proportion, but attempt to correct the proportions internally. There was such a debate that people didn’t know where they stood, and it was impossible to figure it out. Everyone accepts the way things are now. No one’s satisfied with it, no one thinks it’s completely fair, but they know that they get their pension based on how many years they worked and how much they paid in contributions. Everyone’s pension is calculated based on a combination of these factors; some receive more, some receive less, depending on how much they paid in contributions and how long they worked. And the moment you start tinkering with it, pensioners will compare pension reforms or pension changes with what others are getting. They’re not only interested in whether they’ll receive something, but also in how their situation has changed compared to that of others, because they feel that the fairness experienced over a lifetime – or the acceptable situation that’s developed over a lifetime – is being followed by unfair intervention and change. So I’d caution everyone against meddling with the pension system. If we want to do anything with the pension system, we simply have to raise pensions, or introduce a fourteenth month’s pension after the thirteenth. This is on the agenda, by the way, and we’re working on it. It will involve a lot of money, and we’re working to secure the financial basis for it. So it’s worth talking about. But I’d caution Hungary against introducing a pension tax, as Tisza suggests, or giving more to some and less to others.
You’ve mentioned that Tisza has other tax plans as well. There have been leaks about plans to raise income tax and abolish tax allowances. Of course the party denies this and talks about maintaining the allowances, and even reducing personal income tax in certain brackets. But the Government has launched a national consultation on taxation and, in part, on energy issues. Why do these issues need to be discussed before the election if it seems that this will be one of the campaign issues or one of the main campaign issues?
The problem is that there’s clearly some lying going on. I understand what everyone’s saying, but at the same time there are statements being made about the fact that certain topics shouldn’t be discussed before the election, because then they’ll lose the election. That’s the official position of the Tisza Party. Of course that can be denied, but I saw and heard with my own eyes and ears the leaders of Tisza openly telling their own people that they can’t reveal their plans before the election, because if they did, they’d lose the election. “First we have to win the election, then anything’s possible.” The reason there’s so much confused and contradictory talk on the other side is that they want to conceal their true intentions. But the truth is that in modern politics this is very difficult. Wherever you go there are audio recordings being made, everyone has a mobile phone, you can’t give a speech or hold a briefing – even to your own people – without pictures and quotes quickly getting out. Everyone could hear with their own ears when the Tisza-ites voted to replace the flat tax with a progressive tax. That means a tax increase: a progressive tax means a tax increase. Or when their experts talked about intervening in the pension system and abolishing the pension threshold for women who have been in employment for forty years, and also restructuring the thirteenth month’s pension. So I understand that it’s easier to deny this afterwards than to defend such a position that seeks to fleece people; but the plan is to fleece pensioners, fleece the middle class, and take money away from families. And this isn’t unprecedented – there have always been people who think this way. I’ll say it again: I’ve been watching this for thirty years, for thirty years I’ve been fighting these politicians and economists who have constantly bombarded the Government with such proposals, and who continue to do so now.
But their argument is that the Left always argues for higher taxes because it believes that it can redistribute the revenue collected from them more fairly. Is it clear, however, what the basis is for what they claim would be a fairer redistribution?
This is called social engineering. It’s a different way of thinking – a communist way of thinking, if I may say so. They have an idea in their heads about what a just life is, and they try to force people to live according to the rules of a just life as devised by politicians. This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. It leads to tyranny, oppression, and ultimately economic collapse. We’ve been through this once before. There’s another way of thinking, and that is ours. We say, “Folks, everyone has an income, especially now that there are a million more people working than there were during the leftist era. So there is income.” And we say that if you earn ten times more, you’ll pay ten times more tax. That’s fair. But it has to be collected: you have to pay it, and the state has to collect it. And if everyone pays their taxes according to the principle of “earning ten times more means paying ten times more”, then you end up with a sum that can be used to run the country’s public services – from the army to street lighting. This is a different way of thinking. We only want to take as much money from people in taxes as is absolutely necessary to run the country. We’re happy when people have the most money possible left in their pockets. We don’t want to take money from them and then create a fair world. That’s a lefty thing, and we wouldn’t dream of doing that. We believe that people know exactly how they want to live, they’re happy when they have more income, and they know best how they want to spend it. We don’t want to decide instead of them, take it away from them and then redistribute it. We have to collect some money for public services, but it’s good if as much money as possible is left with people.
One of the questions in the consultation concerns reductions in household utility bills. But at the same time, this week there was a decision at EU ministerial level to ban imports of Russian energy, which in the case of oil would come into effect in January. Does this decision mean that the question of whether reductions in household utility bills can be sustained in the future has been decided?
No, we’re still fighting, so this battle isn’t yet lost. Serious manoeuvres are needed, and battlefield leadership skills are required to ward this off. There is pressure on us: Brussels wants us to abolish the reductions in household utility bills in Hungary. They’ve wanted this for years, because reductions in household utility bills come at a price, which is paid by large multinationals and energy companies. Brussels represents their interests against the Hungarian people, but the Government represents the Hungarian people and their interests. So there’s always been pressure on us. DK and Tisza also support this Brussels line. They always say that reductions in household utility bills are unfair, bad, unserious, humbug and so on, so they’d abolish them. But we must defend them. And now it suits the opponents of reductions in household utility bills that there are sanctions against Russian energy suppliers, because the fact is that we can only maintain the reductions if they don’t force expensive energy on us. If we have to pay more – even double – for oil and gas, then we won’t be able to pass on the current reduced utility prices to the people. So anyone who wants reductions in household utility bills must defend Hungary’s right to buy oil and gas from Russia, or at a price that’s the same – or lower – than that offered by the Russians. This match is not over yet. At the moment there are indeed sanctions against certain Russian oil companies. I started the week by holding several meetings with MOL executives. We’re working on how to counter these sanctions.
Yes, what can be done is an interesting question, because on the other side Brussels is saying that we need to diversify: that we need to obtain energy from multiple sources, and that Hungary hasn’t paid enough attention to this in recent years. In fact this week the Polish foreign minister said that he wouldn’t mind if the Druzhba [“Friendship”] oil pipeline suffered the same fate as Nord Stream.
Yes, but this is just more hypocrisy, sanctimoniousness and double-dealing from Brussels. In this context, what does diversification mean? Diversification means obtaining your energy from as many sources and through as many options as possible. When it comes to oil, for example, today Hungary has two options: we have one main oil pipeline, the Druzhba, and we have a supplementary one. One comes from Ukraine, the other from Croatia. Now, if you say the Ukrainian one should be shut down, then you’re down to one out of two. How is that diversification? Well, the cat is out of the bag, this is absurd. The point is that they don’t want to accept that in Hungary – unlike in all other EU countries – utility costs are extremely low. If you look at a table showing what percentage of their salaries citizens of European countries have to spend on energy bills, you’ll see that for Hungarians it’s the lowest. And although we don’t see this, everywhere in Europe people are saying that if Hungarians can manage to pay low utility costs, then why should they have to pay high ones? So another problem here is that Hungarian programmes, social programmes – such as the reductions in household utility bills, but also the pension system and our opposition to migration – are successful, and others, the citizens of European countries, are looking to the Hungarian example and demanding the same from their own governments. Brussels also has a problem with Hungary being an example that shows that yes, it’s possible to have cheaper energy – you just have to do things differently. You can be a migrant-free country – you just have to do things differently. You can have a pension system with a thirteenth month’s pension – you just have to do things differently. So Hungary is a pebble in their shoe, an example that’s uncomfortable for those who don’t pursue policies like ours. This is why the pressure is twofold: there’s always a geopolitical and foreign policy consideration behind it; and there’s also a domestic political context behind it, a domestic political context that applies to each European country. Anyway, that’s their business, we don’t have to deal with that – we have to protect everything that’s important and good for the people.
I’ve been asking Prime Minister Viktor Orbán about topics including yesterday’s EU summit, the message of the Peace March, and the national consultation.