PM Orbán: ’We have to think big and bold’

“We have to think big and bold,” Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in a video on Facebook he recorded on his way to a meeting of the ruling Fidesz and Christian Democrats’ parliamentary groups in Balatonfüred.

The prime minister said there was “plenty to discuss”, noting the changes that had happened in the world since the end of parliament’s autumn session. “And finally, for once it was not to our detriment but in our favour.”

Orbán said the inauguration of the new US president last month had changed the Western world.

In the last 15 years, he said, the government had been working “against a headwind” to fix the Hungarian economy, raise wages, create jobs, protect the 13th-month pension, and introduce it.

“The international environment was against us in all of this,” he said.

But now, he added, this had changed, “and what we had been told was bad has now been said to be good”, and in terms of the essence of the new US policy, was in line with Hungary’s policy.

Orbán said this was a “radically new development”, noting that the government had been able to launch a subsidised credit scheme for blue collar workers, raise the minimum wage and launch an economic action plan that includes the Demján Sándor Programme aimed at scaling up local SMEs.

“But given that there are big changes afoot, and that there will be even bigger changes in the coming period, it’s worth launching new programmes,” he said. “We have to think big and bold.”

The prime minister said he mainly wanted to discuss the new schemes at the group meeting and convince the MPs of their merits.