"It would have been in the interests of the European Union to accept both Hungary and Croatia as a member state sooner, because it would then also has been much stronger financially when the economic crisis unfolded", stressed Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in an interview on Croatian public television (HTV), which aired on Thursday.
HTV has interviewed the heads of state and/or government of the EU member states to mark Croatia's accession to the European Union on 1 July, and is broadcasting one every day after the evening news.
In reply to a suggestion by the reporter that the accession of Croatia was delayed because the EU wanted to include all of the former Yugoslavian republics at the same time, the Prime Minister replied: "The EU likes the Croatians, because it is a beautiful country, has a rich culture and is successful. Arguments against earlier accession were more related to the economic crisis. In general the EU, the countries that are part of it, is terrified of accelerating its own expansion, because there is less and less money and more and more economic difficulties and problems with internal politics in its member states. Part of society is against expansion and politicians have a tendency to follow this behaviour".
"During their socialisation, everyone in the European Union, including the Hungarians to a certain extent, embraced the political way of thinking according to which Western European countries are rich, while we belong to the soviet zone, which is not good, and so the task is simple; we have to do what the western states do. But this is now at an end, the world has changed. If we take a look at how the best Western European countries are performing today, we see that they are losing their competitiveness, that the welfare state is no longer viable, and that great social dissatisfaction and chaos is beginning to emerge. Seeing this, we can't tell the people of Hungary to do what the Western countries do. Western European societies have both good and bad characteristics. And for this reason my opinion is that every country outside the eurozone must have its own economic strategy. I think that the interests of Central European countries coincide in many areas, and so we in Central Europe should consider possibly developing a joint economic strategy", the Prime Minister said. "If we add together the economic growth of Poland, Slovakia and Hungary, and that of the slightly stagnant but still positive Czech Republic, then it becomes obvious that without the region, although this growth is of course linked to the German economy, there would be no economic growth within the EU", he added.
The West doesn't always like our economic strategies. When a new element of this appears, they always pose many questions and their interests sometimes suffer, but even so, many Western European citizens ask the question: why aren't we doing what the Central Europeans are too? I was the first Prime Minister to introduce the bank surtax, and now the majority are doing the same thing. Certain taxes on multinational companies - the more equitable distribution of social burdens - was also one of our initiatives, and today it is applied universally."
"We imagine the future of Europe to be a union of nations and not as a united states, because we are Hungarian and national sovereignty is very important to us. We are prepared to practice certain segments of our national sovereignty jointly with others, but we would like to retain [that sovereignty] and govern our own country ourselves.", the Prime Minister replied. "But the countries of the eurozone must intensify and accelerate their cooperation, and deepen their integration. Because if a country has a common currency with others it is difficult to maintain the level of sovereignty enjoyed by those outside the currency community. I expect increasingly deep cooperation between the countries of the eurozone and we, who are not part of it, must develop a rational relationship with this new core of the European Union", he said in closing.
(Prime Minister’s Office)
