Budapest, December 2 (MTI) – The era of western dominance in the global economy and the military as well as the “export of democracy” is over, Prime Minister Viktor Orban told a meeting of the Hungarian Diaspora Council in Budapest on Wednesday.
The West is continually losing its influence and “we are right in the middle” of a global reshuffle of power, economy and politics, Orban said.
The focus of the global economy is shifting to eastwards, and this is not a temporary phenomenon. The West’s military dominance is also expiring and “the export of democracy has come to an end, a course in global politics based on the export of human rights”, he added.
Europe suffers from even greater problems than America and the European economy is in a state of “sclerosis”, Orban said, adding that were it not for central Europe, the European Union’s economy would be shrinking.
Orban said the success of reforms in Hungary is not doubted even in such “bright-eyed” places as Brussels.
Commenting on illegal migration, he said an absurd coalition has been formed comprising a network of tens of thousands employed by human smugglers, a team of human rights activists paid by businessmen and certain leading EU politicians. As a result, “we are importing to Europe people who have been forced to leave their home or have decided to leave”.
It is not that they cannot be stopped, but “we are organising their travel, sending out vehicles and suspending the laws that would enable a normal immigration policy. This is the mass migration of the new age and the migrants are not just entering Europe but storming it,” Orban said.
Referring to last week’s EU-Turkey summit on the migration crisis, Orban said that it would transpire in the next few days whether a “secret backroom deal” had been made for the EU to accept 400,000-500,000 Syrian refugees. He said this would entail enormous pressure on Hungary and the other Visegrad Group countries. “Not only do they want to bring these people into Europe but they also want to distribute them among member states immediately and with binding force,” he said.
“This we will not accept,” the prime minister added.
Addressing the opening of the meeting, the deputy prime minister, Zsolt Semjen, said, “We are a nation all over the world and the Hungarian diaspora is a link to the whole Hungarian nation.”
Semjen, who is in charge of the policy for Hungarian communities abroad, told the session that “we have become a nation around the world not as a matter of will but because history shaped it this way.”
“From this apparent handicap we had to carve out an advantage, an endeavour which has clearly been successful,” he said. In every corner of the world there are organised Hungarian communities which do not behave like paramilitaries or partisans, he added.
Photo: MTI