Orbán: Europe’s fate is once again being decided at Bulgaria’s southern borders

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has presented Bulgarian prime minister Boyko Borissov with the Civil Division of the Hungarian Order of Merit. In his address, Mr. Orbán said that once again Europe’s fate is being decided at Bulgaria’s southern borders, and that the Bulgarians are not only standing up for their own country and strengthening Hungary’s security, but are defending the whole of Europe.

Mr. Orbán said that for more than one thousand years Hungary and Bulgaria have withstood the storms of history, and so they realise that there are historic errors which cannot be corrected. “We seek to make all our decisions serve the interests of our nations, because this is the only way to defend ourselves and Europe”, he said. He added that what Bulgaria is now doing is not specified as its obligation in any treaties, but is something which it is obliged to do by its history and its Christian values.

What Bulgaria is now doing is not specified as its obligation in any treaties, but is something which it is obliged to do by its history and its Christian values.

Europe’s southern borders must be protected once again, the Prime Minister said, and this task falls on those who not only have long histories, but also long memories.

The Prime Minister welcomed Mr. Borissov as a friend of Hungary, saying that the Bulgarian prime minister has done a great deal to ensure that friendship between the two countries should not only be a subject for the chronicles of history, and to ensure that this friendship should not only be linked to the past, but also to the present and the future. He added that Hungarians have always taken comfort in the knowledge that “there is a people in the Balkans with a fate, a spirit and a history akin to ours”, a people which understands Hungarians’ actions and way of thinking.