Orbán invited to Washington in phone call with Trump

Budapest, November 25 (MTI) – Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said he had a phone conversation with Donald Trump and the US President-elect had invited him to Washington.

“Trump made it clear during the conversation that he had a high opinion of Hungary,” Orbán said in an interview to Friday’s edition of business daily Világgazdaság.

“Our position has greatly improved … I had the impression that he understood that Hungarians are brave people who fought for freedom and whose economic achievements in the past six years were outstanding,” he said.

“He invited me to Washington and I told him that I had not been there for quite some time because I’m treated there as a black sheep. He laughed and said the same was true of him, too,” Orbán told the paper.

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“America will now have a president who is not limited by ideologies; he is open and far more interested in success, efficiency and results than in political ideologies … This is favourable for us because the facts support us,” he added.

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Commenting on the wage deal signed on Thursday, Orbán said its most important message was that working in Hungary is worthwhile.

The deal reached with representatives of employers and trade unions was reached relatively quickly, showing that “players in Hungary’s economic life have not lost their common sense”, he said. It is clear that union representatives still remember what it was like in 2010 when the collapse of the economy was on the agenda, he added.

The agreement is based on Hungarians putting in work in terms of both quantity and quality. Instead of trying to find loopholes or living on benefits they have chosen a life based on work, Orbán said.

In response to a question about whether the wage deal represents the start of a process to narrow the wage gap between Hungary and the European Union, he said he never considered EU wages a reference point. Even if some experts and politicians “keep drawing comparisons with wages in other member states”, such comparisons reveal very little, he added.

It is only partially true that many Hungarians are drawn abroad due to higher pay. Since Hungarian became a member of the common labour market, “people will always come and go here too”, he said.