Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen, Prime Minister Bolojan and Prime Minister Boc – because that is how you will remain for me, as in Hungary, once you are prime minister, you are always prime minister. Honourable Speaker of the House, President Hunor Kelemen, Religious and Secular Leaders, Dear Hungarian Compatriots,
It is good to be here among you again. Thank you for the invitation. I would like to express my special thanks to Prime Minister Bolojan for allowing me to be here with him today.
I must begin by saying that yesterday we were delighted when a Hungarian received the Nobel Prize in Literature. This is the third Hungarian Nobel Prize in three years: after physics and medicine, now literature. I do not need to explain to Hungarians why today I have to start with this, but it might be useful for our Romanian hosts. It might help them understand why the Hungarian people feel such a deep sense of belonging, why Hungarians are such strong patriots – regardless of whether they live in Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, or Serbia. Perhaps Romanians also know this, and since Prime Minister Bolojan is from Oradea/Nagyvárad, he certainly knows that the Hungarian nation is held together not primarily by geography, not by state borders, and not even by blood, but by language, culture, history, and a common spirit. Without literature, there is no Hungarian nation.
But the Nobel Prize is even more important to us than that. Dear Prime Minister, Dear Romanian Friends, I will let you in on a secret: we Hungarians have a nightmare. Perhaps other nations have one too. I do not know what the Romanians’ nightmare might be, but I know what the Hungarians’ nightmare is. In the Hungarian nightmare, God appears and asks the Hungarians: “Who are you, and why are you? This is asking us why we are in the world, for what reason. And if we cannot answer this question, or if our answer is not good enough, then God will strike us out of the book of nations, and that will be the end of us. Forever. We Hungarians are in a tight spot: we cannot argue on the grounds of our size, our numbers, our army, or our wealth, and so it is difficult for us to give a good answer. Our answer, the answer of the Hungarians, can only be our achievements, our merits. We must prove that we have given more to humanity than we have received from it. We Hungarians can answer God by saying, “Look, Lord, at our saints of the House of Árpád, our victory at Nándorfehérvár, István Széchenyi, János Neumann [John von Neumann], Öcsi [Ferenc] Puskás, our Olympic champions; and look, Lord, at our Nobel Prize winners.” In other words, Dear Friends, the Nobel Prize is the Hungarians’ permit to exist. This is why we must thank László Krasznahorkai for, through his work, gaining a few more decades for the Hungarian nation. Thank you very much!
President Kelemen,
In the life of a nation, thirty-five years is a long time. Twenty years passed between the two world wars. Thirty-five years have passed since the end of communism and the Soviet world. When we started out – and there are a few of us here who were there then – our only capital was hope, and our only weapon was faith. In 2010 we reunited the Hungarian nation and gave everyone the opportunity to feel at home in their homeland again. This is a great achievement. But what we have achieved will not remain automatically. The future does not belong to those who watch, but to those who act. The future belongs to those who speak through their actions and their work. Those who do not seize the opportunities of the future will lose it. I would like to say clearly and directly to you: next year we will decide not only on the next Hungarian government, but also on the future of the nation, on the freedom and sovereignty of our country. And in April 2026 the country will need the Hungarians of Transylvania/Erdély.
Honourable Congress,
The RMDSZ is also thirty-five years old. God grant it long life! It has proven that what gives a community its weight is not size, but determination. It is not a question of how big the dog is, but how big the fight in the dog is. In Bucharest the RMDSZ is a force for stability and common sense, in Budapest a reliable partner, and in Brussels a representative of Hungarian interests. This is why I say to you that the RMDSZ is not a minority organisation, but a factor in national strategy. The Hungarians of Transylvania are living proof that a community lives as long as there are those who believe in it. And if we believe in it, victory will not be long in coming. The Hungarian community in Transylvania/Erdély is strong, it works, educates, creates, builds and wins – every day, again and again, it wins.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
In Budapest we believe that it is in the mutual interest of Romania and Hungary to ensure stability in the Danube basin, so that the peoples living here do not trample on one another, but instead cooperate. If our neighbours are strong and free, we too will be stronger and freer. This is why we have an interest in Romania’s development, and why we also have an interest in the success of Prime Minister Bolojan and his government. Today there is peace, coexistence and cooperation. For our part, proof of this is Romania’s accession to the Schengen Area. With a history such as the shared history of our two countries, peaceful coexistence is not a given and not accidental, but a decision: a decision made day after day. And we are looking for Romanian partners for this decision – day after day.
Honourable President Hunor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
What we have built over the past thirty-five years is the legacy of our generation. I hope you will have the courage to preserve what we have achieved, I hope you will have the strength to continue what we have started, and I hope you will have faith that our best days are still ahead of us.
God above us all, and Hungary before all else! Go Hungary, go Hungarians!