Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's interview on Kossuth Radio's "180 Minutes", 21 February 2014.

Gábor István Kiss: I have sitting beside me Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Good morning to everyone!

Viktor Orbán: Good morning, listeners!

GIK: Let's begin with Ukraine, seeing as you visited the area close to the Hungarian-Ukrainian border yesterday afternoon; obviously you checked on the public institutions, the institutions that will have work to do if problems arise, to see how well prepared they are. But for the moment, statistics and the news don't suggest that there is a state of emergency in Transcarpathia or on the Ukrainian-Hungarian border.

VO: First of all, let me say in general that in my opinion, and my experiences with people yesterday reinforce this fact, the Hungarians have great sympathy and are most willing to help. No matter who we talk to, everyone is shocked by the images that have been relayed by the international media and we all wish our Ukrainian friends peace, safety and as less human injury as possible. Most Hungarians don't view this situation as being a political one, but instead see before them the image of a disintegrating state in which there is anarchy and chaos, and in which they are now unable to guarantee people even the most fundamental values, such as the right to life; this is a painful state of affairs and we have, in the name of Hungary, expressed our sympathy and willingness to help via all possible channels. And this is what we are doing both through joint European foreign policy and via bilateral relations. As far as preparations and potentially more difficult times are concerned, we felt at the very beginning of the crisis that it was impossible to know where things would stop, and so I ordered the Minister of Interior to set up an operative unit. This operative unit is doing its job.

GIK: But what exactly does the operative unit do, how often does it meet and how often do they assess the situation?

VO: It had a meeting yesterday too, for example, and the National Security Council also held a session a few days ago and will meet again this week. The four, meaning the Czech, Polish, Slovak and Hungarian Ministers of Interior, are on a hotline and will also meet again within the next few days perhaps. We are also in contact with the Ukrainian authorities and we also receive regular messages from the opposition, and so we are doing our best to continuously monitor the situation, not at the forefront, but in the background, and we are especially doing our utmost to monitor the situation of Hungarians who live in the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine. What we know is that traffic has slowed somewhat, traffic in both directions on the Hungarian-Ukrainian border has diminished to some extent because of the closures along the Polish-Ukrainian border. The situation is pretty chaotic there and some freight traffic is being diverted through Hungary, as I saw yesterday. But there are still plenty of individuals crossing the border in both directions. As far as we can see, there may be a degree of worry among Transcarpathian Hungarians at the moment, but there is perhaps no serious concern and we have no reports of Hungarian families experiencing difficulties in large numbers, and so there is no flow of people travelling to Hungary at this time. However, as you know, the Constitution clearly states that the Hungarian Government has a responsibility towards Hungarians living beyond our borders, to Hungarians living throughout the world; we have our eye on everyone. And accordingly, we are prepared for all eventualities; I inspected the border guards and police and visited the hospitals and the places where people who perhaps find themselves in difficulties can be housed if the need arises. There is something else: Ukraine has five nuclear reactors, of which I believe four are currently operational, and at times like these we must also take this into account, and so we have moved radiation monitoring equipment up to the border area and are in contact with the Swedish, who are the best in the world in this field. And so my feeling is that we are monitoring the situation appropriately.

GIK: It is clearly not easy to take sides and perhaps it is not the job of the Prime Minister of Hungary to express an opinion regarding the situation with Ukraine's domestic politics, but I did note something you said concerning the fact that you now view Ukraine as a state that is on its way towards disintegration.

VO: Yes. Not territorially, but with regard to public order. Some people have been speculating with regard to the territory, and many volunteers have applied to draw new maps, but I don't think these issues are relevant, this isn't the situation at the moment; it is public order that is disintegrating. We cannot imagine a situation in which someone is walking down the street and their biggest worry isn't that someone might pick their pocket on the metro or wherever, but instead that someone might come up to them and simply…

GIK: ...shoot them in the throat.

VO: …yes, shoot them. And there is no one they can turn to and not even the state registers that this has happened and this is the case, so, how should I put it, when a community falls into a state of total insecurity, this is what characterises Ukraine today, and of course we sympathise with them because of it, because this kind of uncertainty, when even human life becomes worthless, is the worst thing that can ever happen to a community.

GIK: Let's move on to your state of the nation address, and today's conversation will be devoted to analysing your speech, as this was the sixteenth time that you have made you beginning of year speech in about thirty minutes of so. I will be continuously opening brackets at each part of the address, but let's begin with the logic of the speech. You began your speech by evaluating the country's economic performance in the first paragraph, and the analysts are saying that you could have said more, but you clearly didn't want to go overboard in praising the country's economic performance, you didn't use too many figures and in fact only used the first paragraph for this purpose. I'll get on to the critical commentary too, in a moment.

VO: Look, when one wants to relay one's thought to one's listeners, who in this case, thanks to the media, are the whole country, one must apply the virtue of moderation. Because, well, everyone has an image, everyone who gives a speech has an image of Hungary and the Hungarian community. I do too, and this means that I have an idea of how my words influence people's way of thinking, and I would like to keep Hungary on track. We have many good characteristics and quite a few bad ones. Hungary is quick to move off the beaten track and over to the edge of the road, onto the hard shoulder or even to fall into the gutter itself. And so when the first pieces of good news arrive we are liable to think that everything is in good order. Or we have this other instinct, which is not to believe that this is a sign of permanent recovery and long-term improvement. And accordingly, how should I put it, in the name of moderation and sticking to realism, I on the one hand stress the achievements, because we didn't win these result on the lottery, the people have worked hard to achieve them, they represent diligence and talent, because the Hungarians have plenty of both. But on the other hand, I don't want to give the impression that we can now sit back because things will move forwards all on their own; this is like a bicycle, if you don't keep pedalling it falls over, so one must create a balance if one speaks in public, or at least this is the responsible attitude in our view.

GIK: The first topic you emphasised was once again employment, and it is clearly true that although employment is decreasing in Europe, it is growing here, but of course you are fully aware of the related criticism that those involved in public work programmes and people who are working abroad enhance the statistics.

VO: Well that's nonsense. This isn't what I'm interested in with relation to employment, having just mentioned moderation, but the relative nature of the improvement. And it would make more sense to perhaps also talk to the opposition not about this nonsense, but about why the employment rate has improved. It has improved because more people are working than before, it's that simple. There are many more people working within the market, meaning in the private sector, and there are many more people working in public work programmes, because these people used to be left by the wayside, but we didn't leave them there but instead provided them with work and an opportunity. And there are indeed Hungarians who work abroad, and the debate or discussion concerning them would be worth a separate conversation, but this isn't the point. The point is that more people are working; the last time the number of people with jobs was as high as it is now was in 1991-1992, but once again, this isn't what I would primarily stress, but instead that we may have overtaken the 4 million mark, but in the Czech Republic, which has roughly similar capabilities to Hungary, this figure is 5 million. I would rather draw attention to the fact that we still have much to do to ensure that there are jobs available to everyone, because there are still very many people in Hungary who want to work, but who despite this are unable to maintain themselves through work. What I think is important are these words, which interestingly an American tycoon said, I believe, according to which the world owes everyone at least to make it possible for them to maintain themselves through their own work. And Hungary is not like that yet, we cannot make this possible for everyone yet, and so instead of criticism, we would like more support, help and new ideas from the members of political life so that we can achieve the coveted 5 million mark. 

GIK: This is a difficult issue though, because since you have brought up the correlation with another country of roughly similar size, the Czech Republic, people can compare the statistics with regard to the average wage there, the rate of inflation there, and to the minimum wage and the purchasing power of pensions, but of course those aren't the bills we have to pay. But what we nevertheless see is that the telecommunications and telephone costs we pay here are as high as they are in Western European countries, in large Western European countries, while of course the average wage is far below their level.

VO: This is why I do not regard the issue of reducing utility charges as something we can overlook, because the issue here is in fact simply that we must fight against this phenomenon that you just mentioned, that we earn less but have to pay more, because it is no accident that things have worked out this way. The situation whereby in Hungary we pay a lot for the services we require to survive while we earn relatively little came about because these service providers, who are otherwise in a monopoly position, meaning we have no one to turn to except that one service provider, and they exploit their positional advantage, as a result of which service providers determine unfairly and unjustifiably high prices. To fight against this, how should I put it, is not a question of acceptance; this isn't a conversation among intellectuals where we sit around a table and we all put forward our various arguments, and the other party will eventually accept that we are right; this is about money, meaning it is deadly serious. What it means is that those profits, which until now, and especially during the period between 2002 and 2010, when utility prices were raised 15 times, slipped out of the country and went to these big, international companies, will from now on not slip across the border, they will remain in Hungary, and will not even remain with the state, but will instead stay here in people's pockets, because we are putting a stop to price rises, and what's more, we are implementing price cuts. When I was growing up – I'll be fifty soon – ever since I can remember every January they announced by how much the price of various things would go up, and I remember how my parents and grandparents would, please excuse me, swear out loud because of what was happening yet again. In contrast, Hungary has now achieved a state of affairs, and I don't mean the Government, but the country; Hungary has achieved a state of affairs in which we are reversing this and lo and behold, inflation was zero in January, there are no price rises and in fact public utility prices have been reduced twice, and a third reduction is on its way. We have reversed this act of God or natural disaster, which we all accepted thinking we had no influence over it. Now we have clearly shown that no, it is influenced by human will, human decisions, interests, greed, business and profit, and we have identified the players and taken this profit away from them and left it in the pockets of the Hungarian people. This is a very difficult procedure. I am sorry that Hungarian political opinion doesn't support this uniformly. To be honest, I didn't think there would be a single opposition party who would go against the reduction of public utility charges, but Hungary really is an absurd place; how can you oppose a reduction in utility charges if it's good for all ten million Hungarians? And despite this, it is still the subject of heated debate. I was expecting the opposition parties to put pressure on me to achieve more cuts, more quickly and sooner.

GIK: I too am only asking you, or offering up this point of view to you, Mr. Prime Minister, from an everyday position. Because the fact is that many people, and we aren't just talking about the reduction in utility charges and not just about household costs, but there's also the cost of food, clothing and fuel, these are also available, can be bought in Hungary at average European prices while wages are much lower, and there are many for whom everyday luxury means being able to buy a crossword magazine at the weekend.

VO: That's true. I have a friend who once said to me: my dear boy, there's no such thing as everything. Meaning you can't have everything at once. I'd also love to wake up one morning, pull out a magic wand from somewhere under the bed, wave it about a couple of times and say everything will get better. But this isn't how things work, because so many things broke down in the past that they need to be fixed one at a time and step by step. We've reached utility prices now, because the standard of living is the most important thing. Utility prices and creating jobs; even lower utility prices and work that provides a suitable standard of living for every Hungarian - these are the two goals that we can realistically set ourselves at the moment, and then of course we'll get around to sorting out everything else too.

GIK: In this speech, you presented building the future using, or rather contrasted it to, the post-communist restoration. You said that the best criticism of the period since the change in regime in 1989 is these past 25 years, and I'd like to emphasise that this also had an element of self-criticism. What you said, word-for-word, was that we must change a system whose construction we too were involved in, meaning you have some healthy self-criticism.

VO: Like normal people usually do. Thank you for not stripping me of this opportunity. The way things work is that one looks at one's own life, and this isn't a question of politics, but is about a human way of thinking, one looks at one's own life and sees what succeeded as hoped and what didn't, what went well and what one would have done differently. And it is no different with politics, except our profession is different with respect to the fact that what the people see is that politicians are always trying to prove that they are always in the right. When the Government took office in 2010, it is no accident that perhaps the very first thing I officially said was that the winner of the elections isn't right, it has a task. So the exercise isn't to go around proving we're in the right, but to perform the task with which we can help people's lives, and this is the philosophy we have kept to during the past four years.

GIK: The expression 'war of independence' was missing totally from your speech and the word 'revolution' only appeared once. Does this mean that we are now in a period of consolidation from this perspective?

VO: I've called the period I see before us an era of growth. I feel that the favourable processes have begun, and you mentioned some of them: stable economic growth, curbing price rises, the reduction in utility charges, an increasing number of jobs. I'd also include the record high import-export balance that we achieved last year, because everything is fine despite the fluctuations in the forint exchange rate, because meanwhile the country is producing more goods and selling more goods abroad than it imports from abroad, meaning that on balance we don't require foreign financing and renewing our public debt, renewing expiring loans is our only task in this respect. So the Hungarian economy is extremely stable. The reason I've brought these examples is because I am convinced that these processes will continue and that these are not results that are only valid for a single year, because it is clear that at their root, and I think no experts and analysts argue this point, are the structurally favourable changes that have occurred within the Hungarian economy.

GIK: But almost everyone draws attention to the level of public debt, or rather to the fact that we have managed to reduce it by perhaps 5-6 percent during this term, and even your plan was higher than that.

VO: Yes, much higher. But this is one of the most difficult things to achieve, because we inherited two difficult things. One is the terribly high cost of living, which we have now managed to reduce to bearable levels through the reduction in public utility prices. And the other is the huge public debt, because if we examine a country's prospects for the future then figures for public debt tell us a lot. There are countries in Central Europe whom God did not punish with governments who irresponsibly increased the level of public debt to 70 or 80 percent. He seems to have punished us, because the level of public debt in Hungary was 85 percent in 2010. But there are countries, the Czechs, the Poles, the Bulgarians, where public debt is in the 20 to 50 percent range. This means that they have to pay much less interest on previously taken loans, which means that a much lower proportion of the income they generate leaves the country for this reason, meaning they have more money to play with. The reason we must reduce public debt is to enable more money to remain in Hungary. What I thought, in fact, and perhaps the numbers are secondary now, was that we could succeed in reducing public debt from 85 percent to 72-73 percent. This would have required a more favourable foreign trade environment, because we have not mentioned that all these results that the Hungarians have achieved over the past four years have been achieved despite an unfavourable foreign trade environment, because Europe, to which Hungary exports 75-78 percent of its products, continues to be a crisis zone. Meaning that we are moving forward against a headwind; with no wind we could have achieved the 72-73 percent level, and with a little back-wind perhaps even 70. But the wind doesn't always blow from the same direction, and so I hope that we will find it easier to pay back and reduce our public debt in the upcoming years, because many or at least some European countries will be in a better position than they are in now.

GIK: Providing economic growth does in fact increase, but let's not bother with that now.

VO: Don't forget that the third or perhaps fourth highest level of growth in Europe is here in Hungary, meaning the rest are falling behind at the moment; they are the ones who need to catch up.

GIK: Yes, except that they say that it should be at around 4 percent or so within a few years to really enable the shedding of public debt.

VO: Not sometime, but we need to achieve around 4 percent growth by 2016, and that's exactly my plan.

GIK: Let's leave this topic for now, because I have selected the absolutely everyday goals which the average listener can listen to with regard to what is relevant to them and their everyday lives. I found a few sentences that dealt with this, there could have been more, but let's not be insatiable. Fidesz and the Government will obviously present its 'promises' with regard to the elections, but a few things are perhaps already visible [from your speech].

VO: People can think in this way, as you describe, I'm sure we would be capable of this too, but we have no such plan, because our 'promises' or plan for the future can be summarised in one short sentence: we would like to continue what we have begun.

GIK: You say that Central Europe is becoming increasingly important. More important to what region? To Western Europe or to a world that lies east of Central Europe?

VO: The two are intrinsically related and will gain in importance within Europe. Europe is struggling with growth problems, the economies are not growing fast enough and can't provide enough work for people, and so if someone looks at a map of Europe they will see that growth performances vary, and this is also what the forecasts say. And so today we can state, and this is a consensus opinion, that the highest growth within the next ten years will be in Central Europe; ten years or so is how far ahead it is possible to see in Europe. This means that the importance of Central Europe within Europe is increasing and this is why it is gaining in importance in the eyes of the world outside Europe. It is a good idea if we Hungarians retain our sense of reality, because there is huge interest in Hungary on the part of the East today, but it isn't because a market of ten million is so attractive, although that cannot be disregarded either, but primarily because Hungary is part of a 500 million, this is roughly how many of us there are living in the European Union, is part of a 500 million strong European market. Anyone who enters Hungary, enters the EU, and so being a member of the European Union bears with it significant advantages with regard to eastern relations, and so it would be silly to place membership of the EU and economic activity in the direction of the East at odds with each other, because the two are related.

GIK: You said in your speech that people should have to pay less tax after their earnings and that everyone who wants to work should be able to work and make a decent living doing so. These sound a little like concrete election promises. Does this mean that personal income tax will go down to single digits?

VO: Look, I belong to an old school. When Ronald Reagan was first elected President of the United States he called a cabinet meeting and said the following, and that was roughly the whole extent of the meeting: Gentlemen, I hate two things, communists and taxes. Do something with these. Of course this is a very American, rather aggressive sentence, I'd rather not hate people, but what I would say is that I also hate taxes. Because, after all, people would like as much money as possible to stay in their pockets when they receive their pay checks. This may sound like a very obvious thing to say, but this is the essence of our economic policy. That there should be work and that more of the wages people receive for doing that work should remain with them. And accordingly I am still a believer in single digit income tax.

GIK: During the next term, if the voters entrust you with continuing?

VO: Don't press me too hard, we're reducing it. Let's agree that the important thing is the trend, that we will continue to try to reduce it.

GIK: Everyone should be able to have as many children as they want to, and this is the question of questions, isn't it, because statistics show that young people want to have lots of children, but then something draws their attention away from having children and starting a family. I'll tell you what this is: they study and would obviously like to get ahead and make a living with those documents, those degrees, and the problem is perhaps related to the question of to what extent they can get ahead with these degrees to enable them also begin building a family nest.

VO: Of course, we all have different lives, but there are also common moments in all of our lives. I am someone who lives in a family, and my view is that the most important thing that is needed to start a family is emotional security, because we want children from somebody, and this means that, how should I put it, you need a normal, civilised life, culture and relations. Hungary isn't doing too badly in this respect in international comparison, meaning Hungary is a nice place, has a good culture, and we have a sophisticated language that is well-suited to expressing feelings. And so I think it is no accident that the majority of Hungarians are family orientated, as is shown by all of the polls. But at the same time it also requires financial security, or at least the chance to achieve it, and in this respect we are not doing all that well yet, because a family and children need a home and they at least one parent with a job. People who are squirming in the debt trap with their foreign currency loans cannot start a family, or only with extreme difficulty. And so my belief is that we need a comprehensive population programme. I already see elements of this and we have been working on improving the situation in recent years. Perhaps we need to act in a more coordinated way, but the family allowance extra scheme and the child benefit system for university students are already pointing in that direction and provide a glimpse of the future.

GIK: Our guest during the past half hour has been Prime Minster Viktor Orbán.

(Prime Minister's Office)