Áron Gulyás: It’s clear that Europe’s arming itself, with various large arms manufacturers receiving orders of increasing size and numbers. Earlier you mentioned that large arms manufacturers are exerting increasing influence on European decision-making. How should we picture this – what exactly does it look like?
There are documents and resultant decisions which state that the factories of the German automotive industry, which is slowly but surely declining, must be converted to military production – since in technological terms the manufacture of armoured vehicles and of civilian motor vehicles aren’t so far apart. There had already been thinking in progress about how a declining German industry could be revived through military developments. I believe that Hungary also needs military developments, but the question is where to develop the military industry. The Germans want to spend a significant portion of their money in Ukraine, where they want to sell weapons manufactured here – in Europe. I think this is a mistake, because now we need to focus on strengthening ourselves, strengthening our own army, our own military, our own weapons, and our own technology. The idea that strengthening the Ukrainian army will contribute to Europe’s security is wrong. That’s a complete misconception. The only way to make Europe more secure militarily is to strengthen ourselves, not Ukraine. There’s a plan on the table, which we’ll discuss on Thursday, for Europe to undertake the long-term maintenance of a Ukrainian army of 800,000 – even though we don’t have money for anything. So if there’s no Russian money available, because there might not be, then the Europeans want to go ahead with borrowing. Our children and grandchildren will be paying the interest on that. If we look at another item on the agenda, the next seven-year budget, it’s already true that in the next seven-year budget we’ll have to start repaying the loans used to set up a joint financial fund after COVID, and this will take up 10 per cent of the budget. That will go towards the interest on the money that was borrowed and already spent. They want to give the Ukrainians another 20 per cent from this budget. This means that 30 per cent will be removed from the budget. They want to increase military spending, but the question is this: What about the other traditional European goals? What about agricultural subsidies, rural development, cohesion, convergence, research? Everything will go down the drain, everything will be taken away. If the European Union continues down this path, in the coming years every important sector will lose out. It’s no accident that soon farmers will be gathering in Brussels to protest against what I’ve just been talking about.