Orbán still unconvinced: ‘Unthinkable that Ukraine could join EU’ – UPDATE
It is “unthinkable” that Ukraine could join the EU, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview to public radio on Friday.
Speaking ahead of next week’s EU summit in Brussels, the prime minister said he could not “give a single argument” from the point of view of Hungarian interests to justify Ukraine joining the bloc, “and I can provide lots of arguments against Ukraine’s accession”, which he said would “ruin us” in terms of domestic agriculture and the Hungarian economy as a whole. Also, Orbán said it was unclear “how we could staunch crime” that would “flow into Hungary” as a result.
Orbán: We achieved policy measures ‘deemed impossible’ over past 15 years
Hungary’s government has achieved policy goals over the past 15 years that others have “deemed impossible”, Orbán said. He pointed to the large scale of family tax allowances and the number of taxpayers impacted.
He said that a recently announced personal tax exemption for mothers of two under 40, affecting 120,000 taxpayers, would come into force from January 1. A PIT exemption for mothers of three will affect 230,000-240,000 taxpayers, and an exemption for mothers of two between the ages of 40 and 50 will impact 230,000 taxpayers when it comes into force in 2027, he added.
He said critics of the measures were right on one point, that the government had taken on an “enormous commitment”, but added that it had successfully implemented other measures “deemed impossible” in the past 15 years. He said those measures included the PIT system, the fostered workers programme and minimum wage increases. He warned that if the left wing were to return to government, the PIT rate for the middle class would again reach 35pc.
Orbán said money generated from the strong performance of the economy would go to families “as long as it’s up to us”, not to multinationals.
Orbán: Family ‘most important thing in the world’
Family is the “most important thing in the world” and peace is the most important guiding principle behind the government’s ambitious plans focused on families, the prime minister said.
Speaking about the tax cuts he announced last week, Viktor Orbán said there were two guiding principles behind them, and both were conditional on there being peace. Because of this, over the last three years the government “couldn’t even think about such breakthrough changes and sensationally unprecedented measures” such as the newly announced family benefits.
Concerning the war, Orbán said there were still “fierce and bloody battles being waged on the frontlines”, but peace was within reach. It was also clear, he added, that the war would not escalate because the United States “has chosen the side of peace”.
Orbán said that for the first time he felt that the government could shape its economic policy “according to the logic of peace”. He said the second guiding principle behind the tax cuts was that “family is the most important thing in the world”.
“All of these measures, which are essentially changes in the tax regime, are based on this simple sentence everywhere in the world,” he said.
Orbán: Hungary to be ‘tax paradise’ for families
Hungary will be a “tax paradise” for families, Orbán said. He told Kossuth Radio that Hungary was establishing a tax system over four years that put families in the focus. The system, unique in the whole world, will give young people the opportunity to decide to start a family, he added.
Orbán said government plans to roll out lifetime personal income tax exemptions for mothers with two or three children — complementing an existing PIT exemption for mothers of four — would impact taxpayers in the millions. “There’s nothing like this in the whole world, it’s an entirely new approach,” he added.
Orbán said he wasn’t in the habit giving advice to others, but suggested the Western world could adopt a similar approach to resolve problems with their own families, instead of with migration.
Orbán: Biggest corruption case in Western world must be exposed
The “left-wing international network” responsible for “big corruption cases taking hold in the entire Western world must be exposed in Hungary too”, he said. The work of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk “must be continued urgently”, Orbán said, referring to US aid agency USAID.
He said USAID “gave money to people, organisations, and the media” to handle certain cases according to the agency’s expectations, but this was “sold as independent and tolerant”.
“They advised us to do awful things,” Orbán said, saying they wanted Hungary to take in illegal migrants, support the war in Ukraine, and expose schoolchildren to “all kinds of gender-activist explanations of the world.”
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