Radio interview with prime minister Orbán – UPDATE

Budapest, February 24 (MTI) – International organisations “posing as civil groups” in Hungary need to be made accountable, the prime minister said on Friday, arguing that they served the interests of global capital. The campaign to collect signatures for a planned referendum on whether Budapest should host the 2024 summer Olympics ended up “murdering a dream”, Orbán said.

International orgs ‘serving global capital’ must be made

“For the past twenty plus years, we have tolerated the presence of these organisations, but when it came to the issue of migration, their behaviour was too much,” Viktor Orbán said in his weekly interview with public Kossuth Radio.

“Hungary cannot allow itself to have organisations that remain shrouded in secrecy … continuously encouraging migrants to violate Hungarian laws and somehow cross into the country,” the prime minister insisted.

By doing this, organisations “primarily linked to [Hungarian-born American financier] George Soros” serving global capital “crossed a line”, Orbán added.

Orbán also criticised the European Union’s planned “systematic border control” border control regime, describing it as “madness”. While illegal migrants are being let into the EU, law-abiding passport-holding Europeans are subjected to strict checks, he argued, saying that it was crucial to get Brussels to change its mind on the plan.

He said the regime would result in travellers having to wait 8-10 hours on the Croatian-Hungarian and Romanian-Hungarian borders in the summertime.

On the topic of Hungary’s utility price cuts, the prime minister repeated his stance that Hungary must be allowed to retain its right to set energy prices over Brussels. He said “Brussels bureaucrats” were constantly looking for ways to take over more and more powers from EU member states.

The EU “is not an empire of heavenly peace, but rather a battleground where we constantly have to fight the bureaucrats so that they can’t take away powers from Hungary”, he said.

On the subject of Brexit, he said Hungary had no desire to “punish” Britain for its decision to quit the EU. He said the UK was “grounded in common sense”, adding that the EU should not be on bad terms with that country after it leaves the bloc.

Orbán also talked about the EU’s plan to raise taxation policymaking to the level of the bloc. He said that unlike western Europe, central Europe was competitive, which was why he said many western companies viewed this region as a better place to set up factories than at home, partly because of favourable tax regulations. He said western and central Europe were in a race for investments, which should not be banned. Orbán said Hungary was prepared to veto EU legislation on tax regulation if necessary.