Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Summer Camp.
We
have arrived here after advancing through the Romanian troops. But we
would prefer to see them as a welcoming committee, and we have good
reason for that: in our European struggle for Christianity, we weakened
Latin Christians will also need Romanian Orthodoxy. So we welcome
interested Romanians who are in the audience.
Every year there is
some head scratching over what we should in fact talk about; because of
course we know in advance what we will all end up thinking – but the
question is how we will get there. This year I have been given some
helpful material in this regard, because the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
of Romania – which I understand to belong more to the presidential
branch of power – has come to my aid and sent me a démarche. In this
they have told me what I should not talk about, what I can talk about –
and how – and what I should avoid. This is an official state document. I
will share its contents with you. We are advised not to talk about
anything that might offend Romanian sensibilities. Then these are
listed. National symbols. Fine, I think we can agree on that. I will not
talk about that, but I welcome our friends who have come with Hungarian
and Szekler flags. We should not talk about collective minority rights.
I will not talk about those either, but will just state that they exist
and are the entitlement of the Hungarians living here. They say not to
talk about non-existent administrative areas in Romania. I have thought
hard about what they could mean by that. I think they mean
Transylvania/Erdély and Szeklerland, but we have never claimed that
these are Romanian administrative areas. Then they say what things we
can talk about – but only if we do not present them in a bad light. For
example, Western values. If one is involved in European politics, as I
am, then today “Western values” mean three things: migration, LGBTQ, and
war. My Dear Romanian Friends, these do not need to be presented in a
bad light, as they already present themselves in a bad light. And
finally, there is one more pearl referring to what must be left out:
“xenophobic overtones related to a revisionist approach on migration”.
Now this is like communist time travel. It reminds me of the jokes of
Hofi [a Hungarian comedian from the communist era], which were about who
was able to say, in one breath, “imperialist, revisionist, bourgeois,
clerical, chauvinist, fascist”. One almost shudders at the thought. So
we will avoid those subjects.
In return, having received such a
démarche, what will we offer our Romanian friends? First of all, if the
Romanian president comes to Hungary and gives a speech, which we invite
him to do, we will not dictate to him what subjects he can talk about,
and how he can talk about them. We also recommend that our Romanian
brothers and sisters take note of the fact that Hungary fully supports
Romania’s main national ambition at the moment: membership of the
Schengen Area. We would like to draw their attention to the fact that
from 1 July 2024 Hungary will be holding the Presidency of the European
Union, and that our programme’s highlighted goal is for Romania to gain
Schengen membership. Until then, all we can say is that Romania has a
new prime minister. God bless him! A new prime minister, a new chance,
and maybe something will come out of this that will be good for both of
us. Since I have been prime minister he is my twentieth Romanian
counterpart, so we hope for success on the twentieth occasion. Now,
after the démarche, let us look at what we should talk about.
Dear Friends,
We
are living through a particularly dangerous period in the history of
humanity. These are years of great change. This change is affecting
every corner of the globe and every country, so if we want to say
something valid about Hungary, about Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin,
we must first talk about the world. The essence of my message is that
the balance of power in the world has shifted, and now we are suffering
the serious consequences of this. Looking back, we see that for eighty
years after the Second World War there was a balance of power in the
world. For us Hungarians, this period consisted of two parts. There was
the first forty-five years, when the Anglo-Saxons handed us over to the
Soviet communists – and, incidentally, back then they were not as
squeamish about the Russians as they are now. And then there has been
the second period, of thirty-three years so far, when we have been able
to live in freedom without military occupation, the Soviet Union and
communists. Although this was a huge change over eighty years, the
balance of the world was not upset, because we managed to lead the
Soviet Union out of the parade of history without a war. But now China
has shifted the balance of the world. This is one of the Western world’s
old fears. Even Napoleon said, “Let China sleep, for when she wakes she
will shake the world.” How this situation has come about is
instructive.
I will make a brief digression, a digression on
methodology. In my experience, when you make a political decision, you
have to simultaneously visualise three timeframes. The issue to be
decided on must first of all be classified in one of these timeframes,
and you should only make a concrete decision on it once you have
classified it. So there are three timeframes in which politics exists:
tactical time, strategic time, and historical time. If you make the
wrong classification, your decision will have unintended consequences.
Let me give you two examples. When Chancellor Merkel was confronted with
the migrant invasion in 2015, she classified the problem in tactical
time, and said, “Wir schaffen das”, or “We can handle this”. Today it is
clear that in reality the issue belonged to strategic time, because the
consequences of her decision would transform the entire culture of
Germany. Now we come to China. The second example is from the United
States in the early 1970s. Back then the US decided to free China from
its isolation, obviously to make it easier to deal with the Russians;
and so it put that issue in the strategic timeframe. But it has turned
out that in fact this issue, the liberation of China, belongs to the
historical timeframe; because as a result of that liberation, the United
States – and all of us – are now facing a greater force than the one we
wanted to defeat.
Wrong classification, unexpected consequences.
But what happened has happened, and now the fact is that there has
never been such a rapid and tectonic shift in the global balance of
power as the one we are living through today. Remember – or note – that
the way in which China is rising is different from that in which the
United States rose: the United States emerged; China was, and is. In
other words, we are really talking about a return: we are talking about
the return of a 5,000-year-old civilisation of 1.4 billion people. And
this is a problem that needs to be solved, because it is not going to
solve itself. China has become a production powerhouse. In fact it has
already overtaken the US – or is overtaking it at this very moment: car
manufacturing, computers, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals,
infocommunication systems; in the world today it is the strongest in all
of these areas. What has happened is that China has made the roughly
three-hundred-year journey from the Western industrial revolution to the
global information revolution in just thirty years. As a result, it has
lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, and today humanity’s
combined prosperity and knowledge is greater than it was. But if this is
the case, what is the danger? The danger, the reason the situation is
dangerous, Dear Friends, is that the gold medal already has an owner:
after its own civil war, from the 1870s onwards the United States grew
to be the preeminent country, and its inalienable right to world
economic supremacy is part of its national identity, and a kind of
article of faith. And whenever that position has been challenged, the
United States has always successfully repelled the challenge. It
repelled the Soviet Union. And, let us remember, it also repelled the
European Union. A few decades ago the European Union’s plan was to
promote the euro as a world currency alongside the dollar. We can see
where the euro is today. And we also had a plan, which we expressed as
the need to create a great free trade zone stretching from Lisbon to
Vladivostok. What do we see today? Today, the free trade zone stretches
from Lisbon to the outskirts of Donetsk at the furthest. In 2010 the US
and the European Union contributed 22 – 23 per cent of total world
production; today the US contributes 25 per cent and the European Union
17 per cent. In other words, the US has successfully repelled the
European Union’s attempt to move up alongside it – or even ahead of it.
Dear Summer Camp,
In
international politics there is a simple correlation: the bigger your
GDP, your gross domestic product, the more influence you have in
international affairs. In other words, what we are seeing today is a
steady decline in American dominance on the world stage. And no
preeminent world power will take kindly to that sort of thing. Their
reasoning is simple. It can be roughly summed up as follows: “We’re at
the top of the world. We climbed here in order to stay here forever. Of
course, there’s this thing called history, which is disagreeable, but
the point is that what’s always happened to other countries and other
peoples has come to an end with us, and we’ll stay here at the top of
the world forever.” This is a tempting thought, but the unpleasant truth
of our life today is that in world politics there are no eternal
winners and no eternal losers. An even more unpleasant truth is that the
current trends favour Asia and China – be those trends in economics,
technological development, or indeed military power. A still more
unpleasant truth is that changes are also taking place in international
institutions. We all know the correlation which shows that whoever
creates international institutions will thereby gain an advantage from
them. So China has quite simply created its own: we see the BRICS and
the One Belt One Road Initiative; and we also see the Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank, the development resources of which are
several times greater than the development resources of all the Western
countries.
In other words, Asia, or China, stands before us fully
attired as a great power. It has a civilisational credo: it is the
centre of the universe, and this releases inner energy, pride,
self-esteem and ambition. It has a long-term plan, which is expressed as
“Ending the century of humiliation” – or, to paraphrase the Americans,
“Make China Great Again”. It has a medium-term programme: to restore in
Asia the dominance that existed before the West arrived. And it can
neutralise the chief US weapon, the chief US weapon of power, which we
call “universal values”. The Chinese simply laugh at this, describing it
as a Western myth, and noting that such talk of universal values is in
fact a philosophy hostile to other, non-Western, civilizations. And,
seen from over there, that view contains some truth.
In other
words, Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Summer Camp, the situation we are
living in today is one in which day by day we are moving towards
conflict. The question – the 1-million-dollar question – is whether this
conflict can be avoided. There are ever more studies and books on this,
and I am also working from them. One notable work says that in the last
three hundred years there have been sixteen occasions when a new
“champion” has risen to pull alongside – or overtake – the world’s
leading power. The bad news is that of the sixteen instances thus
identified, twelve have ended in war, and only four were peacefully
resolved. In other words, Dear Friends, we are at the most dangerous
moment in world politics today, when the leading great power sees itself
sinking towards second place. Experience shows that the dominant great
power tends to see itself as more benevolent and better-intentioned than
it really is, and attributes malice to its challenger more often than
is – or should be – justified. Consequently, the starting point for each
opposing party is not the intentions of the counterpart, but its
capabilities: not what the counterpart wants to do, but what it is
capable of doing. And thus war is already in the making. This is what is
called the “Thucydides Trap”, named after the man who wrote the history
of the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens, and who first
identified the problem.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The
implication for our lives is that a clash between the two great powers –
including between their soldiers – is more likely than we are able to
see from here in Tusnádfürdő today. The good news – or at least a ray of
hope – is that war is not inevitable. Its avoidance is conditional on
the world’s ability to find a new equilibrium to replace the one that is
now in motion. The question is how this can be done. The truth is that
this is a task for the “big boys”. We have not been dealt a hand in that
card game. Let us not misjudge our role. All we can say is that now
something should be done that has never been done before: the big boys
should accept that there are two suns in the sky. This mentality is
radically different from the one we have lived with for the last few
hundred years. Regardless of the current balance of power, the opposing
sides should recognise each other as equals. You can see that there is a
conveyor belt of high-level American officials going to Beijing, which
is a sign that in the United States they see the danger and the trouble.
The Secretary of State has been there, the Treasury Secretary has been
there, and – most recently – the former national security advisor Mr.
Kissinger has been there. And if you have been reading the news, you
will have seen that a few days ago the Japanese announced that they are
doubling their military spending, and will be building one of the most
powerful armies in the world.
So, from this analysis of the
situation, what do we need to do? What is worth understanding, Dear
Friends, is that the settling of the new equilibrium will not happen
overnight – or even from one month to the next. The settling of such a
new equilibrium will take a whole generation. This means that not only
will we live our lives within this global system of relations, within
this world era, this zeitgeist: so too will our children. And we
Hungarians must make headway in this world situation and zeitgeist, and
we must shape our Hungarian national plans with this in mind.
Let
us take one step closer to Tusnádfürdő, and let us say a few words
about the European Union. When you look at the European Union today, you
may get the impression that it is plagued by anxiety and that it feels
hemmed in. There are good reasons for this. The EU has about 400 million
people; and if I add in the rest of the Western world, that is another
400 million. So this amounts to 800 million people, surrounded by
another seven billion. And the European Union has an accurate view of
itself: it is a rich union, but a weak one. It is a rich and weak union
that sees around it a world in revolt, a world in confused uproar, old
grievances, many hungry mouths, raging development, colossal
consumption, and millions of people about to set off for Europe. It sees
a wave of millions of people gathering in the Sahel, which, if we are
unable to restrain it, could spill over onto the European side of the
Mediterranean. Earlier this week there was a Latin America-EU summit in
Brussels, where I saw and heard all this with my own eyes and ears. In
the vocabulary of Latin American leaders, the most common terms were
these: “native genocide”, which I think means the extermination of
indigenous peoples; slavery and the slave trade; and “reparatory
justice”, meaning reparations for injustices. These are the terms in
which they are thinking. No wonder the European Union feels hemmed in.
And
if we take a look at the International Monetary Fund’s list ranking
countries by the size of their economies, by their national GDPs, we see
that in the rankings for 2030 Britain, Italy and France will have
dropped out of the top ten where they still are today; and Germany – now
fourth – will have slid down to tenth place. This is the reality. Today
this fear, this feeling of being hemmed in, is driving our European
Union towards seclusion. It is afraid of competition – like an ageing
boxing champion, showing off his championship belts, but not wanting to
ever enter the ring again. From this comes seclusion: seclusion in an
economic, political and cultural ghetto. They have developed the
language for this, which is something they are strong in: they are still
strongest in formulating and briefly describing complex situations.
They call this seclusion “decoupling” – or, more subtly, “de-risking”,
which is a form of risk reduction. If you look at it from this point of
view, the policy towards Russia is also a decoupling: an attempt to
decouple Russia from the European economy through wartime sanctions. And
of course Europe can be cut off from Russian energy, but in fact this
is ineffective and illusory, because Russia cannot be cut off from the
rest of the world. Russian raw materials will be bought by others, while
we will suffer from wartime inflation and lose our competitiveness. I
will quote you two figures. The amount paid for the European Union’s
imports of gas and oil – the two together – was 300 billion euros before
the Russian war, and 653 billion euros last year. So the way the
European economy is operating today – the way we want to compete today –
is with energy costing twice what it used to cost, while in many parts
of the world it is still available at the price it was in the previous
period. This is the great debate for Europe in the years ahead. This is
what we Hungarians have to prepare for: either to decouple, or to
participate in international competition. As they say in Brussels,
“de-risking or connectivity”.
Here I will make an informational
digression. The big European companies do not want to decouple. They do
not even want to get out of Russia. I have looked up the relevant
statistics. Of the 1,400 largest Western companies, 8.5 per cent have
pulled out of Russia – 8.5! From the pharmaceutical industry, 84 per
cent have stayed; 79 per cent of the European mining industry is still
in Russia, as are 70 per cent of energy companies and 77 per cent of
manufacturing companies. And you will never guess: last year, in 2022,
the Western companies that stayed paid a total of 3.5 billion dollars
into the Russian central budget. Now, seen in that light, the attack
that the Ukrainians are launching against our poor, small Hungarian OTP
bank is nothing but a manifestation of Hungarophobia. We must therefore
reject it. I am not even going to talk about clever little European
tricks such as the sudden doubling – in a single year – of the volume of
goods exported from Germany to Kazakhstan. I wonder why that was?
Another
European development in relation to which Hungarians will need to
position themselves in the coming years is the struggle between
federalists and sovereigntists. Empire or nations? Here we suffered a
serious blow to the lower ribcage, when Brexit caused our British
friends to leave the European Union. This upset the balance between
sovereigntists and federalists within the EU. The earlier configuration
was the French and the Germans as federalists on one side, and the
British and us – the V4 [Visegrád 4] – on the other. If the British were
in the European Union today, we would not even have to learn terms like
“rule of law mechanism”, “conditionality” or “economic governance”, as
they would not exist. These could only be introduced in the European
Union because the British left and we V4 members could not prevent them –
and indeed the V4 was attacked by the federalists. We can all see the
result. The Czechs have basically changed sides, Slovakia is wobbling,
and only the Poles and Hungarians are holding out. Of course, we have a
chance to increase the number of sovereigntists. I can see that chance,
as such a government has been formed in Italy, there is also movement in
that direction in Austria, and tomorrow there will be elections in
Spain. Let us be under no illusion: the federalists are carrying out an
attempt to oust us; they have openly said that they wanted a change of
government in Hungary. They have used every means of political
corruption to finance the Hungarian opposition. They are doing the same
thing in Poland, and remember how they tried to prevent the Meloni right
from winning in Italy. All these attempts have failed, and I hope that
the European Union elections in June 2024 and the subsequent
redistribution of power will result in a more favourable balance of
power in Europe than the one we have today. This brings us to Hungary,
Ladies and Gentlemen.
What can – and what should – Hungary do in
this international situation, in this European environment, amidst this
great fracturing? The most important thing is to know ourselves. Here I
am not referring to our eleven centuries of history, and not even to the
brilliant summation given by the RMDSZ [Democratic Alliance of
Hungarians in Romania]: “One thousand years in Transylvania/Erdély, one
hundred years in Romania.” What we must now keep in mind is the path
onto which we finally stepped in 2010, after the twenty chaotic years of
the transition from communism. In 2010 we opened a new era, and we must
not lose sight of that – whatever the difficulties we face, whatever
storms, lightning bolts and thunderstorms greet us. Ours is a new era,
which has spiritual and economic foundations.
First let us briefly
recall the spiritual foundations of this era. These spiritual
foundations are summarised in the Constitution. And the new Hungarian
Constitution is the document that most clearly distinguishes us from the
other countries of the European Union. If you read the constitutions of
other European countries, which are liberal constitutions, you will see
that at the heart of them is the “I”. If you read the Hungarian
Constitution, you will see that it is centred on the “we”. The Hungarian
Constitution’s essence, its founding premise, is that there is a place
that is ours: our home. There is a community that is ours: this is our
nation. And there is a way of life – or perhaps more precisely an order
to life – which is ours: our culture and our language. Therefore in the
Constitution our spiritual starting point is that the most important
things in human life are those which cannot be obtained alone. This is
why the “we” is at the heart of the Constitution. Peace, family,
friendship, law and community spirit cannot be obtained alone. And, Dear
Summer Camp, even freedom cannot be obtained alone: the person who is
alone is not free, but lonely. All the good things in life are
essentially based on cooperation with others, and if these are the most
important things in our lives, says the Hungarian Constitution, then
these are the things that society and the legal system must protect.
Now, as the conceptual foundation of our new era, this recognition and
these shared things manifest themselves in the life of the individual as
bonds to others. Therefore, the Hungarian Constitution is a
constitution of communal ties, which seeks to strengthen these ties, and
therefore stands on the ground of a culture of strengthening. Liberal
constitutions do not describe a world of attachment, but of detachment;
and they do not seek to affirm something, but to reject something – in
the name of individual freedom. Our Constitution, however, affirms the
place where our children will live as being our homeland. It affirms our
identities as men and women, because that is what we call family. It
also affirms our borders, because that is how we can say who we want to
live with. When in 2011 we created the new Constitution – a Hungarian,
national, Christian constitution, different from other European
constitutions – we did not make a bad decision. Indeed, let us say that
we did not make a bad decision, but rather made the right one; because
since then we have been beset by the migration crisis, which clearly
cannot be dealt with on a liberal basis. And then we have an LGBTQ,
gender offensive, which it turns out can only be repelled on the basis
of the community and child protection.
The failure of the
liberal-based countries is that they thought their old communities would
be replaced by new ones; but instead all that has happened is that
everywhere a strange alienation has emerged. Of course France, which is
suffering from this, is a great nation; it has “la gloire”, and it will
surely find some kind of solution. But, with spiritual foundations in
mind, and digging a shovelful deeper, it is also worth saying that at
the base of the Hungarian Constitution and the intellectual foundations
of the new era there lies an anthropological insight. Two hundred and
forty years ago, during the Enlightenment, left-wing, internationalist
and liberal intellectuals and political leaders thought that the
rejection of religion and Christianity would be followed by the
emergence of an ideal, enlightened community based on an understanding
of the good and the common good, living a free and superior life
according to recognised, sociologically based societal truths. This is
what they hoped for from the rejection of Christianity and religion. At
that time, two hundred years ago, that was not out of the question. It
might have been a possibility. But two hundred years have passed, and
today we can see that it is pure illusion: by rejecting Christianity, we
have in fact become hedonistic pagans. This is the reality! This is
why, in my eyes, it was predestined that our 2011 Constitution was
proclaimed at Easter, and its birth name is the Easter Constitution.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
This
also lies at the heart of the conflicts between the European Union and
Hungary. The European Union rejects Christian heritage, it is managing
population replacement through migration, and it is waging an LGBTQ
offensive against family-friendly European nations. Just a few days ago
we saw the fall of Lithuania, which had a really fine, remarkable, great
child protection law, which we used as a starting point when
constructing ours. And I see that, under great pressure, the Lithuanians
have withdrawn and annulled the child protection laws that they had
adopted back in 2012. “I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts…”
This is where American friendship leads, Dear Friends!
Well, we
have to say that Europe today has created its own political class, which
is no longer accountable and no longer has any Christian or democratic
convictions. And we have to say that federalist governance in Europe has
led to an unaccountable empire. We have no other choice. For all our
love of Europe, for all that it is ours, we must fight. Our position is
clear: we do not want everyone to share the same faith, and we do not
want everyone to have the same family life or to celebrate the same
public holidays; but we insist on having our common home, our common
language, our common public sphere and our common culture, and that this
is the basis for the security, freedom and prosperity of Hungarians.
Therefore this must be protected at all costs. This is why we shall not
compromise. We shall not back down. In Europe we shall insist on our
rights. We shall not yield to political or financial blackmail.
Bargaining is possible in relation to issues linked to tactical time –
or even strategic time; but never on issues that belong to historical
time.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
And finally, if Zsolt will allow
me, I will say a few words about the economic foundations of the new
era. We have been building our new economic system for thirteen years.
In that time, it has been constructed quite well and has performed well.
Our plan was that up until 2030 it would serve Hungary without any
major changes: it would result in a secure, prosperous Hungary and a
Hungarian population in the Carpathian Basin. We are on track to meet
our targets. In thirteen years the Hungarian economy’s overall
performance has trebled: from 27 trillion forints to 80 trillion
forints. And although in political schools they teach you that when you
speak you should never put a number and a date together in the same
sentence, our goal is to have a GDP of 160 trillion forints by 2030. If
we look at our development targets, I can tell you that in 2010 we stood
at 66 per cent of the European average, in 2022 we were at 78 per cent,
and by 2030 we want to be at between 85 and 90 per cent. If we look at
the Hungarian economy’s competitiveness, in other words its exports, I
can say that in thirteen years we have doubled them; and within them the
share of Hungarian products – products from Hungarian-owned companies –
has increased. Our energy dependency has reduced according to plan:
imported electricity currently provides 28 per cent of consumption, and
by 2030 – with Paks II [nuclear power plant expansion], solar energy and
network developments – we want to reach zero. We are building our power
plants accordingly, and we will spend 11.5 billion forints on this. In
2010, employment was 62 per cent, today it is 77 per cent, and by 2030
we want to have increased it to 85 per cent. We have a huge university
development programme. In 2010 no Hungarian university was in the
world’s top 5 per cent; but last year eleven Hungarian universities were
in the top 5 per cent. As far as family support is concerned, we used
to have a childbirth rate of 1.2, but we have raised that to 1.5. This
is called the fertility rate or reproduction rate, which is not a nice
term; but it was 1.2, and now it is 1.5. In order for our population to
stop falling, however, we need it to be 2.1. This shows that we are in
big trouble, and we must continue to mobilise all our strength and
energy, and resources – government budgetary resources – towards family
policy. And defence is also starting to recover. We have, or are
beginning to have, an effective army. We will have warriors instead of
employees in uniform. Alongside them we now have a national defence
industry. We are one of the few NATO member countries that can devote at
least 2 per cent of its annual GDP to this. And we are not far behind
in our national unification programme for 2030. We have implemented a
tenfold increase in the 2010 level of funding for national unification
beyond the borders, and this year – at a time when we are facing all
sorts of difficulties – we are increasing support for education and
training fivefold: by 500 per cent. I can say that we are seeing the
results of this. I would like to congratulate those Szeklers and
Transylvanians who took part in the collection of signatures for the
Minority SafePack Initiative and the European Citizens’ Initiative on
national regions, who were able to collect more than a million
signatures on each issue. This takes strength, people and strength. It
was a great achievement. Congratulations!
And finally, these
economic foundations – the economic foundations of the new era – are
fine, and they sound good; but there is a snag, and that is what I would
like to end with. The snag is that within the space of three years we
have been hit by two meteorites. The first was COVID, in 2020. We
somehow managed to defend ourselves against that, and relatively quickly
we were back on the path we had set for ourselves, the path we plan for
2030. But in 2022 another meteorite attacked us; this one was a war,
and that is a tougher nut to crack. This meteorite has knocked us off
course. And I can tell you that today Hungary, the Hungarian people and
the Hungarian government are struggling and fighting to get back from
this deflected course and back onto the normal path that will take us to
2030. I see the earliest date for a return to this path as being around
July 2024. That is when I hope to be able to report to you that
economic growth in Hungary is once again significant, with bank lending
strong again and a return to a growth path well above the European
average.
The most difficult period is now behind us. Inflation
was sky-high, but now we are breaking its back, and we have every chance
of getting it below 10 per cent by the end of the year – so in single
figures. The first half of the year was very difficult, because
inflation in Hungary rose faster than wages. This has not happened for a
very long time, maybe more than ten years. But in the second half of
the year we will straighten out, and if the Good Lord helps us we will
be able to nullify the depreciation of wages across the whole year, for
2023. Interest rates on loans in Hungary today are also sky-high, but I
believe that we will be able to normalise them and bring them back to an
acceptable level by the second quarter of next year at the earliest.
This means that if we do everything right, if we are lucky and if God
helps us, by the time of the European Parliament and local elections in
2024 we will be back on the path that will take us to 2030. And then, at
the 2024 Tusványos camp, I will be able to talk calmly about the plans
for 2030 to 2040.
So to sum up, Ladies and Gentlemen, I can tell
you that one should be shrewd in major world affairs, build connections
in the world economy, fight in EU disputes, persevere in spiritual
matters, and remain steadfast in national unification.
God above us all, Hungary before all else!
Go Hungary, go Hungarians!
https://alexkrainer.substack.com/p/is-the-eu-about-to-begin-disintegrating?utm_source=twitter&sd=pf
The default ethos of mainstream commentariat seems to be, we never expect any surprises (except the pandemics, that is). However, we
might be up for many surprises in the coming months. One of them could
be an accelerated disintegration of the European project.
