In a speech delivered in Tusnádfürdő/Băile Tușnad on Saturday, the final day of the 29th Bálványos Summer Open University and Student Camp (Tusványos), Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stressed that every European country has the right to defend its Christian culture and the traditional family model, and has the right to reject immigration.
Before an audience of several thousand gathered in front of the central open-air stage, the Prime Minister reviewed the year which has passed since the last Tusványos event, highlighting that the Hungarian community in the Carpathian Basin broke through a psychological barrier when it welcomed its one millionth newly confirmed Hungarian citizen.
In April the Hungarian government was given the opportunity to build a new era
He stated that after eight consecutive years in office, in April the Hungarian government was given the opportunity to work for another four years, and was mandated to build a new era.
He said that the process of unifying the Hungarian nation has been transformed into the process of nation building, and the dress rehearsal for this was the general election in April.
The Prime Minister stated that the election result confirms the fact that building the Hungarian nation is succeeding.
Mr. Orbán declared that Hungarians are capable of understanding their complex and complicated situation, and that if necessary they are able to decide on their fate with one will and to move as one nation.
The Prime Minister said: “From here, from Székely Land, I can say that Hungarians outside Hungary have stood alongside Hungarians in the motherland. Every vote cast here was a declaration of commitment to Hungary. With gratitude in my heart, I thank you for this commitment and support.”
According to Mr. Orbán, the two-thirds victory in 2010 gave the government parties a mandate to build a new system – embodied in the economy by the Hungarian model, and in politics by a new constitutional order resting on national and Christian foundations. He stated that with its 2014 victory it was given a mandate to consolidate the system it had created.
Mr. Orbán believes that after the result of this year’s election, the task facing the Government is to build a new era: to embed the political system in a cultural era.
“After the third two-thirds victory we need a new intellectual and cultural approach”, he said, “and there is no denying that from September major changes lie ahead of us.”
Speaking about the stability of the system built so far, the Prime Minister highlighted that, in contrast to the “growth” of minus 6 per cent in 2010, in 2017 Hungary produced real growth of 4 per cent, and that while in 2010 the value produced by the country amounted to HUF 22,224 billion, it now stands at HUF 38,183 billion.
He recalled that “We repaid the loans taken out as a result of the 2008 crisis, we sent the IMF packing, we are keeping our deficit under control, and we have reduced government debt from 85 per cent of GDP to 71 per cent”. He added that in Hungary today there are 756,000 more people in work than there were before 2010, wages have increased by 60 per cent, the fertility rate has increased from 1.25 to 1.5, and crime has fallen by 50 per cent.
Based on this stability, the Government has set ambitious goals which had previously been inconceivable: by 2030 for Hungary to be among the European Union’s top five countries in terms of quality of life; to halt the country’s demographic decline; dual carriageways and motorways to extend as far as the borders; Hungary to be independent in terms of its energy supply; and to build a new Hungarian defence force.
Rebuilding the Carpathian Basin is one of the most important plans
Mr. Orbán described rebuilding the Carpathian Basin as one of Hungary’s most important plans. He said that “Hungary’s one hundred years of solitude is at an end. Once more we are strong, we are determined, we are brave, we have power, we have money, and we have our resources.”
He added that over the past few years Hungary has proved to its neighbours that “whoever cooperates with the Hungarians will prosper.”
Mr. Orbán said that Hungary invites its neighbours to create high-speed rail and road links connecting their countries, to link their energy networks, and to coordinate their defence policies and military developments.
He cautioned that a joint building programme requires mutual respect.
Mr. Orbán noted that Hungarians realise that for Romanians this year’s centenary (of the Romanian Assembly at Gyulafehérvár/Alba Iulia in 1918, which declared the union of Transylvania with the Kingdom of Romania) is cause for celebration. He asked them to understand, however, that for Hungarians “there is nothing to celebrate”.
He said that it is necessary to face up to the fact that for one hundred years modern Romania has been unable to deal with the natural fact that one and a half million Hungarians live in the country, but Bucharest even claims that Székely Land does not exist.
The Prime Minister said that he agrees with the slogan of the RMDSZ (the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania): “One Thousand Years in Transylvania, One Hundred Years in Romania”. This, he noted, expresses the fact that Székely Land existed even before modern Romania came into being, and Székely Land will continue to exist even when the whole of Europe has submitted to Islam.
Instead of denying reality, he said, one should see this situation as a source strength. Transylvania should be seen as a resource, and there should be the desire for an ever stronger Székely Land and an ever stronger Hungarian community. This will also provide added strength for Romania, he said.
He stated that every European country has the right to defend its Christian culture, and it has the right to reject the ideology of multiculturalism.
Every country has the right to defend the traditional family model, and to profess that “every child has the right to a mother and a father”, Mr. Orbán pointed out.
He said that Central European countries have the right to protect their nationally strategic economic sectors and markets.
He considers it to be a basic principle that every country has the right to defend its borders and to reject immigration.
The Prime Minister said that another basic precept is that on the most important issues every country has the right to insist on the principle of one nation, one vote; in his view this cannot be denied in the EU either.
“We Central Europeans assert that there is life beyond globalism, that it is not the only path, and that the path of Central Europe is that of an alliance of free nations”, the Prime Minister stated.
He went on to say that at present the EU is pursuing a crude policy on Russia, which should be replaced with “an articulate Russia policy”. Mr. Orbán added that the security of Hungary, of the whole of the Carpathian Basin and of Europe depends on whether Turkey, Israel and Egypt are stable enough to halt the Muslim influx.
If any one of these three countries loses its stability, there will be serious consequences for Europe’s security, the Prime Minister said.
Europe’s leaders have been unable to protect the continent from immigration
Mr. Orbán stated that Europe’s current leaders are not fit for their jobs: they have been unable to defend the continent from immigration. He said that the European elite has failed, and the European Commission – whose days are numbered – is a symbol of that failure.
He pointed out that according to the founding treaties, the European Commission must be impartial and unbiased, and must guarantee the four basic freedoms.
Instead of this, he asserted, today the Commission is partisan, because it is siding with the liberals; it is biased because it is working against Central Europe; and is no friend of freedom, because instead of freedoms it is working towards building a European socialism.
According to Mr. Orbán, an exclusively liberal European elite has failed because it denies its roots, and instead of a Europe resting on Christian foundations it is building an “open-society” Europe.
He summed up the divergence in attitude thus:
“In Christian Europe, work had prestige, man had dignity, men and women were equal, family was the basis of the nation, the nation was the basis of Europe, and states guaranteed security. In today’s open-society Europe there are no borders, European people can be readily replaced with immigrants, the family has become an optional and fluid form of cohabitation, the nation, national identity and national pride are seen as negative and obsolete notions, and the state no longer guarantees security.”
He added that, in liberal Europe, European identity has been reduced to form devoid of content.
According to Mr. Orbán, liberal democracy has become “liberal non-democracy”: there is liberalism, but without democracy. He added that a sign of this lack of democracy is that in Western Europe censorship and restrictions on freedom of speech have become general phenomena.
The Prime Minister said that he believes that we must focus on the 2019 European Parliament elections, and that the elections can only be about a single serious common European issue: the issue of immigration.
He said that if Europe decides on immigration, it will also decide on the European elite, and whether it has handled the issue of immigration well.
In his view the European elite is nervous because the positive election result in Hungary could lead to the derailment of the large-scale transformation of Europe: the Soros Plan. He believes that in the European elections the grand aim of transforming Europe and shifting it into a post-Christian and post-national era could be blocked.
There is an alternative to liberal democracy, he said: Christian democracy. He labelled as misleading the approach which claims that Christian democracy can also be liberal. He stated that Christian democracy can be described as illiberal.
Liberal democracy is on the side of multiculturalism, it is pro-immigration and promotes a fluid model of the family, he said. By contrast, Mr. Orbán observed, Christian democracy prioritises Christian culture, is anti-immigration and promotes the Christian family model.
In the European Parliament elections we can wave goodbye to liberal democracy and the elite of ’68
According to the Prime Minister, in next year’s European Parliament elections we can wave goodbye not only to liberal democracy, but also to the elite of ’68. He declared that instead of the generation of 1968, the time has come for the anti-communist, Christian and nationally committed generation which emerged in the 1990s.
Concluding his speech in Tusnádfürdő, Mr. Orbán said that “Thirty years ago we thought that Europe was our future. Today we believe that we are Europe’s future”.