Orbán: Hungary must continue to pursue a sober kind of politics

During an interview with public radio, the PM also announced that he is inviting Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanjahu to visit Hungary.

Orbán said that peace was within reach thanks to the election victory of Donald Trump, but it was clear that the outgoing Democrats wanted to leave behind a “more serious legacy” compared with the situation as it was when Trump won.

He said Hungary’s fate was directly at stake in this conflict, so it would act in a thoughtful, predictable and calm manner, Orbán said.

Noting that Ukraine is Hungary’s neighbour, he said the conflict was not escalating to a distant part of the world and war developments in a neighboring country were immediately palpable. Furthermore, ethnic Hungarians live in Transcarpathia, “so the threat is direct”, he added.

By now they have started using weapons that can easily reach countries outside the territory of Ukraine, primarily neighbouring countries, he said. “These reports concern us and are not just about international diplomatic conflicts; they are about direct Hungarian interests and Hungary being under the threat of war,” he added.

Commenting on Trump entering office on January 20, he said “dawn will arrive all of a sudden” but “we are in the darkest hour … and until then we are living in an even greater darkness than before.” The two most dangerous months of the war “are ahead of us”, he said.

The prime minister said the situation was clear in military terms: if the Americans stopped backing Ukraine, Europe would not have the slightest hope of successfully supporting Ukraine, not to mention the financial-economic consequences of a lost war, he added. Orbán said Hungary would be guided by this thought in the next two months, until Trump enters office: to survive by pursuing a smart and sober kind of politics, he said.

In response to a question about the threat of introducing heavy weapons, he said there were significant risks.

He noted that within 24 hours of the US presidential election results became clear, the German government collapsed.

“We Hungarians are not used to that; we are a country that pursues sovereign foreign policy, and regardless of how much the world cracks on all fronts, we’ll always make decisions based on our national interest, and we won’t tie our fate to other governments,”he said.

He said developments in America could have an almost immediate effect on the behaviour of “not-insignificant” western European governments and countries. This was because when the Americans made certain steps, then certain countries felt an obligation to follow the American directive, he added.

Orbán said the weapons that the Americans had allowed the Ukrainians to use were extremely complicated and reports suggested that the Ukrainians were unable to reach their target with them independently and without the involvement of US expertise. This was why the Russians had responded so suddenly and powerfully, he added.

Orbán also said that the weight and significance of remarks made in western Europe and in Russia were different, and western European decision-makers had not considered this seriously enough.

“There’s a huge amount of empty talk and idling in western Europe, with statements made that have no direct consequence. European leaders in important positions easily allow themselves to make tirades on geopolitical and military matters, thinking that these are merely a matter of communication, to make a domestic political point,” he said.

He added that the Russian system of communications was very different. “When the president says something, it has weight and consequence. When the Russians amend the doctrine on the use of nuclear force, it is not only a communications tool or trick,” he said.

Referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent statement under which Russia could consider as targets countries sending such equipment to Ukraine, Orbán said: “This isn’t a communications trick; we must keep our wits about us.”

He said Russia fundamentally made its policies and sought its place in the world based on military power. “With one of the strongest armies in the world and the most modern, most destructive weapons are crucial for its vision of the future,” he said, adding that “when they say something on this subject, it should be understood the way they say it.”

In the next two months, “the logic of war should be taken into consideration, carefully weighing each word and sentence and proceeding in line with common sense rather than on basis of the political rules based on western European communications,” Orban said, adding “or else we’ll be in trouble.”

Orbán said he supported that “the number and size” of current conflicts in the world should be reduced through every measure possible. “But international institutions in fact fail to act carefully in their decision-making,” he added.

Referring to an arrest warrant against the Israeli prime minister issued by the International Criminal Court on Thursday, Orbán called the move “outrageously brazen and cynical”,amounting to “interference in an ongoing conflict in legal disguise” and motivated by politics.

Orbán said this was in itself wrong and would completely discredit the reputation of international law and could “add fuel to the fire”. He said he had “no other choice but to oppose” the ruling.

Referring to the invitation, Orbán said he would guarantee that the ICC ruling would not be applied in Hungary, adding that”we will not follow its provisions”.

“We solely consider the quality and state of Israel-Hungary ties … Israel’s prime minister will be surrounded by suitable security to conduct substantive talks in Hungary,” he said.

Meanwhile, Orbán said the goal was to make the Patriots for Europe the most influential party family in the European Parliament by the end of the current term. He said that this required building alliances and using political tools within the European Parliament to increase their power, adding that he expected agreements and group alliances to significantly strengthen the Patriots’ influence on decision-making.

Orbán said that in international politics “you have as much influence as you have strength”. It was a good start, he said, when “we kicked in the door of the saloon bar of European politics”.

“The representatives of common sense turned up,” he added, which was enough to set up the third largest group.

The Patriots represented “occasionally raw but clear positions” that differed from the mainstream, the former centre, regarding migration and child and family protection, for instance, he said.

Orbán said the “period requiring behind-the-scenes deals in the European Commission” was over and it is now possible to return to “the period of clear, straight talking”. It is necessary to declare that they want to strengthen the group, he added.

Concerning Eurasian cooperation, Orbán said the subject had earlier been given “much less weight” in education than ties between the United States and Europe, whereas Europe has “the most organic ties” to the regions east of Hungary rather than “to the far side of the ocean”. Those regions, he said, included the Caucasus, China, India, Korea, and Japan “not just Russia”.

“Changing directions is not easy in Hungarian public thinking,” Orbán said, adding that he had three maps of the world in his study, one with Europe, the second with the US and the third with Asia at its centre.

“We Hungarians do not look at the world like that; we are accustomed to a single viewpoint … I think it is time we talked more about Europe’s integral unity with Asia, in education, in public discourse, and perhaps in interviews like this one,” the prime minister said.

Orbán said reorienting Europe and Hungary was an ongoing assignment that should happen according to “our own way of thinking” as well as in terms of economic, trade and investment policy.

The prime minister said those who opposed the government’s National Consultation survey were not “actually interested in people’s opinions” and saw no direct link between the will of the people and political decision-making. He called that attitude “a kind of disdain”.

“A negative and threatening tone arising from contempt” had emerged in Hungarian politics, he said, adding that politicians who were coarse and crude in their public language should “apologise and withdraw”.

He also said aggression arising from such verbal expressions should be prevented “because we don’t need a war in public life … we are a community, and we need to treat each other fairly.

Meanwhile, the prime minister said a key plank of the government’s new economic action plan was to increase the purchasing power of wages.

In Hungary, employers and employees come to an agreement on the minimum wage, he said, but the government puts its seal on the agreement. If the deal is beyond the reach of the two sides then the government “helps out”. He added that the government had stepped into the latest round to secure a three-year wage deal, and this would soon be ratified.

Accordingly, the minimum wage in 2025, 2026 and 2027 will grow above the rate of inflation, so the purchasing power of wages will increase rather than the opposite, he said. Inflation, Orbán added, was expected to be between 3 and 4 percent against wage growth of above 10 percent. “We want to maintain [this] momentum…” he said.