Orbán: Developments in the US ‘going favourably for us’
Addressing the Bálványos Summer University in Baile Tusnad, Romania, on Saturday, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said the ongoing changes that would usher in a new global system presented an opportunity rather than a threat, because it meant Hungary had more room for manoeuvre than at any other time in the last 500 years.
Orbán said that 500 years ago Europe had been a winner, while Hungary had been a loser of the previous global paradigm shift, arguing that whereas a new economic space had opened up for the western part of the continent, the Muslim conquests had turned Hungary into a war zone for a long period, which afterwards had been forced to integrate into a German-Habsburg world.
He said developments in the United States “are going favourably for us”, adding, however, that he did not believe that the US could give Hungary “a better economic-political offer” than European Union membership could. “But if they can, we must take it into consideration,” he said.
Orbán said China had given Hungary “the maximum it can offer” and considered Hungary’s EU membership an asset, “unlike the Americans, who always imply that we should leave [the EU].” China’s offer, he said, was that “we should participate in each other’s modernisation”, even if the differences in size should be kept in mind.
The prime minister said the western part of the EU “won’t ever return to the nation-state form”, adding that the bloc’s eastern half could protect nation-states.
He said the EU had “lost the ongoing war” and would be abandoned by the US, adding that Brussels would not be able to finance the war in Ukraine or the country’s operations. This, he said, meant that “the European Union will have to pay the price of the war escapade, which will be high and will affect us unfavourably.”
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