Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said the European economy was in a state of crisis and its weight in the world was declining, while the threat of terrorism and migration was a constant.
The prime minister addressed a press conference in Vienna, announcing a new European political pact with Herbert Kickl, the head of the Freedom Party of Austria, and Andrej Babis, the former prime minister of the Czech Republic, who heads the ANO party. PM Orbán referred to the war in Ukraine, saying no one had succeeded in preventing its outbreak and no one had managed to isolate it. “We’re living in the shadow of the war’s escalation,” he said, adding that Europeans wanted peace, order and development, while “the Brussels elite is for war, migration and stagnation”. Notwithstanding poor external conditions, “the bad political decisions of the current Brussels elite also contributed to this crisis,” he said, adding that Europe was “uncompetitive” and “we’re on the verge of a trade war with our most important potential trading partners and they mismanaged the green transition.” “What we have in Brussels now is not green policies, but poisonous green policies,” PM Orbán said, adding these “will kill us rather than cure us”. “Today, more coal is used in Europe than before the green transition was started and prices are much higher, which ruins the economy,” PM Orbán said. He said the change was now underway in Europe, with several European governments having folded in light of the EP election results. This was proof that democracy only worked on a national level. National governments resigned “but the Brussels elite resisted because Brussels is not a democratic construct,” he said. “Three parties are here before you: the strongest Austrian party, the strongest Czech party and the strongest Hungarian party,” the prime minister said. “They are taking responsibility” to launch this new grouping, he declared. PM Orbán drew a distinction between politics in Hungary and “Brussels”, saying Budapest wanted to stop illegal migration, represented “the traditional family” and believed in national sovereignty. He called Hungary an “island of difference in the great European liberal ocean”.