PM Orbán suggested solutions to the EU’s problems

The European Union is a peace project, and there is a war in Europe, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said at the 50th Cernobbio Forum in northern Italy on Friday, adding that war and migration are factors to be considered.

Waiting for the emergence of a peace plan acceptable for both parties in the war in Ukraine will not bring peace, Orbán said.

Few wars had been fought without communication between the warring parties, a key factor to ending the war, he said. Communication must be maintained with both countries, he said.

Orbán said brokering peace started with communication and led to a peace plan through a ceasefire.

He also talked about his travels to Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing and the US over the summer. He said he had started on a “peace mission” to “understand what are the chances of peace”. “And my conclusion was … that there is no intention on either side to have peace. Both leaders said … that time is on their side.”

The next step should be “creating an international context that expresses … that the world wanted a ceasefire as soon as possible,” Orbán said. Without that, it would be extremely difficult to convince the warring parties of moving towards peace, he said.

EU should forget political union

Speaking about Hungary’s presidency of the Council of the EU, Orbán said their priority was restoring the European Union’s competitiveness, adding that “forcing” a political union among member states would only make that goal more difficult.

He called for a review of the European Green Deal, which he said was going against the interests of European companies. The EU has recently imposed tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, which German car makers had said went against their interests, he said.

Orbán said red tape should also be cut and the number of bureaucrats and bureaucratic procedures reduced. Investments must be brought back to Europe, rather than having European companies invest in North America or China where the business environment was better, he said.

Orbán called for further strengthening ties in the united European market but “forgetting” a political union. The latter would be a mortal wound to EU competitiveness, he said.

While a political union was a potential “disintegrating factor”, further integrating defence capabilities would be crucial, he said.

War, migration, gender, the biggest challenges, Orbán believes

Orbán said political challenges were not about general European values enshrined in the treaties. The issues of war, migration, gender and a work-based society, however, were re-shaping the European political arena, he said. He cautioned against a political union among states with starkly different views on those matters because that could “disintegrate the European Union”.

Migration was another “disintegrating factor” in the EU, Orbán said, with member states battling various difficulties that couldn’t be handled with a unified approach. Migration should be decided on a national level, by the citizens and leaders of member states, he said.

If the EU forced member states to join forces in issues they disagreed on, that could disintegrate the EU, Orbán said.

Orbán asked why this was necessary and said it was a serious problem that many migrants had been allowed to enter Italy and several other countries, as these countries were now facing difficulties about how they can live together with them.

Orbán said Hungary’s problem was not how to live together with migrants but how not to let them into the country. These were different issues and the two different difficulties could not be handled with the same political tools, he added.

Countries unwilling to follow the EU policy on migration should be allowed to opt out, rather than forcing them to cooperate, risking that the conflicts then would “disintegrate” the bloc, he said.

Disintegration must be stopped

Europe is facing three major challenges, Prime Minister Viktor Orban told reporters ahead of the Cernobbio Forum on Friday.

Peace or war is the first challenge, while competitiveness is second, he said, adding that the Hungarian EU presidency was aiming to set up a new competitiveness pact for the bloc. Without such a document Europe could not compete with the US or China, nor with the West and East, he said. As the third challenge, he mentioned migration. He said the regulations “forced upon us” a year ago “have failed” and insisted that migration could disintegrate the EU unless a new regime is created. The process of disintegration must be stopped, he said, adding, however, that peace must come first.

Orbán said “the Brussels elite” had decided to set up “the same [European] Commission” that had been unable to stop the war, prevent competitiveness from plummeting, and migration. “This is not good,” he said, but added that he trusted that people can change and perform better and expressed his support for the commission. The prime minister added, however, that as a “rational person”, he believed the EU had neglected voters’ desire for change.

Asked about a possible meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, Orbán said the first step was communication followed by a ceasefire and a peace agreement.

Orbán also suggested that saying that the main objective of the European Union is to ensure peace was “a negative thing”, adding he did not believe this was good for the bloc.

Meloni is his “Christian sister”

Answering a question, Orbán noted Azerbaijan’s strategic importance and said Hungary, as rotating president of the EU, supported the bloc striving for closer, strategic ties with that country.

Meanwhile, Orbán said Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni was not only his counterpart but a “Christian sister”, adding that earlier these ties had not had great importance in European politics but a new era was approaching, and it would have a fundamental significance for both Hungary and Italy.

Concerning Italian MEP Ilaria Salis, who had been arrested in Budapest for violent acts, Orbán said that “to come to Hungary … in an organised way and to use violence against citizens who are just walking on the street and then be awarded membership in the European Parliament is a very Italian way”, adding that the case was “an Italian issue”. “The fact is that to beat peaceful citizens on the streets in Hungary is a crime,” he said.

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