We need to develop a new culture of dialogue in the European Union, so that the Western part of the continent can better understand the Central-Eastern European region, and move away from the practice of “passing moralising judgment”, Minister of Human Capacities Zoltán Balog said at a conference in Germany on Saturday.
In connection with the international migration crisis, the Minister emphasized: “Everything that is a threat to security, must be rejected”.
In his lecture at the conference held at the St. Marienthal Abbey in Saxony by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which has close ties to the governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Mr. Balog stressed that by adding the region stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, the EU “was not reunified, only supplemented”, and the dialogue required for true unification and to achieve a real partnership had not taken place.
“This is also due to the fact that in the West there is still little understanding of the dispute that has developed with regard to migration between the countries of the Visegrád Group (the Czech Republic, Hungary Poland, and Slovakia, the V4) and other countries in the region, “which are in fact more than a simple dispute”, Mr. Balog said at the “What does Conservatism mean Today?” conference, emphasizing that during the migration crisis Hungary was the only nation that had fully adhered to EU regulations, but despite this had received a lot of criticism from the Western part of the continent, deriving from an extremely one-sided interpretation of solidarity. “In Western perception, solidarity is confined to a system for distributing migrants or immigrants that is based on necessity and which only works in principle, whereas there are many sides to taking responsibility for the fate of the community”, the Minister pointed out.
“With regard to the solidarity displayed within the field of economy, for example, it is apparent that the development of a self-sufficient Central and Eastern Europe instead of a region that relies on the money of others is a success story, and the region operated as the motor for the whole EU economy”, Mr. Balog said. “Hungary’s goal is to become a net contributor to the EU budget by 2030”, he underlined.
“With regard to social policy, parallels can be observed between the work performed in the interests of the integration of people arriving in the EU via the migration crisis, and efforts to integrate the Roma community”, he explained. With relation to this he emphasised that the Roma minority isn’t migrating away from Hungary, because since the current government came to power in 2010 integrating policy has been rational and successful.
In a statement to the public media during the recess of the conference, the Minister stated: “It’s high time to begin dialogue, for which the province of Saxony, which is located in the area of the former GDR and is the closest German province to Hungary, is an ideal partner”.
“People in Saxony and in the CDU-linked Foundation, which organised the seminar, have a very different way of thinking that in Western Germany or other parts of Western Europe, and accordingly there are many shared opinions with Hungary and the V4, including a critical perception of migration and a positive attitude towards patriotism”, he added.
Concerning the title of the conference, Mr. Balog heighted the fact that the Germans are not satisfied with their response to present-day conservativism, which they believe is too “globalist”, and are leaning towards the Hungarian approach, which includes for example the fact that social homogeneity is not just a historical notion, but will also be important in future, because it gives people security.
“The Hungarian approach also states that everything which is a threat to security must be rejected. Migration is also one such threat”, Mr. Balog declared, adding that while Germany faces the question how to solve the integration of the immigrants who continue to arrive in their thousands, Hungary still has the opportunity to say “we won’t let them in”.
“This decision is not based on cold-heartedness or xenophobia, but on the recognition that allowing them to come will not provide a solution to the poverty and underdevelopment of the third world, but for us it would bring on a catastrophe that would change our country’s image and coexistence, the culture on which Hungary and Europe has been built for a thousand years”, Mr. Balog stated.