New Delhi, 17th October 2013.

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

The idea to come here was raised by his Excellency the Foreign Minister, when he was so kind as to visit us just at the beginning of this summer in Budapest at the general meeting of Hungarian ambassadors. And he raised the idea that while I am in India, why not invite me here to express some ideas about the future of Europe, Hungary and our relationship with India.  It is a great honour for me to speak in front of such an excellent audience. You should know that when I was young, Hungary was still well under Communist dictatorship, and at the time nobody was allowed to leave the country unless they had special permission. In this respect, a trip even to Austria, which is a neighbouring country, seemed like an exotic adventure. Not many dreamt of ever getting to India. This is my first time, and I am happy to be here. Once again, thank you very much for inviting me here.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

My job today is not an easy one at all. Your country is a global power in the making, with a huge territory and an enormous population. It would be an exaggeration to declare Hungary a global power in the making. Our territory is somewhat smaller and our population is a little under 10 million. In our case this is not the population of a city, but of the whole country. I am curious whether we and you, living in such different dimensions, can come to a common understanding at all. It is common sense that the world has become a global village, and so I think there is some chance for us.

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

I don’t know how you perceive things, but from Europe is seems obvious that unprecedented changes are now taking place around the world. I think that what we are experiencing as a crisis in Europe is actually a phenomena accompanying the deep and rapid global transformation within the fields of the economy, science, defence, and in the areas of communication and culture – what we also call soft-power. These changes are unpleasant and even painful to us Europeans. To speak the language of figures: Europe’s share of the world population is 8%; while we account for 25% of global production, but 50 % of world's social expenditures. This list of numbers raises a serious dilemma in itself, but here comes the even darker, other side of the coin: the total state debt of the EU 28 countries is some 11,000 billion Euros. The yearly repayment of this sum with interest is more than 2,000 billion Euros, and the member states of the European Union produce approximately 1,200 million Euros of new debt every day! Who could be crazy enough to finance a system like this? And above all, who is ready to do so from cheap sources that are indispensables for competitiveness?

This is pure evidence, that in the Western world we can no longer keep living the way we have been. Regardless of whether we Europeans like it or not, the crisis is not some sort of transitional problem, after which everything will get back to normal once it is sorted out, but represents the end of an era.  

Global transformation is essentially the transformation of power relations; new centres of power have evolved within the global economy, which have an increasingly decisive impact on global processes. Your country is one of the driving forces of this transformation, specifically because of its spectacular economic growth. I am aware, that you are not extremely pleased with your last growth rate of around 5%, but if you want to receive some applause, come to Europe and announce those figures there. Unfortunately, however, Europe, our continent, is becoming weaker, placing it on the receiving end instead of it being the driving force of transformation.  

I think everybody understands that we Europeans do not want to live with this. We don’t want to fall behind, or for Europe to lose its significance and influence. Even clearer, the situation nowadays is the following: Emerging powers win, we Europeans lose. So the question is, whether we can turn things into a win-win solution, and my answer is: this depends exclusively on Europe. To put the question even more precisely: Will Europeans be able to improve our continent’s competitiveness, or not? Speaking about competitiveness, we usually think about economic competitiveness – but the situation is more complicated than that in Europe. What I would like to say is that losing economic competitiveness is the consequence and not the cause. The reason may be found a little deeper. To me, what seems logical about the fact that Europe was once strong but is now weak is that in this case we should not continue to follow the path on which it became weak and was overwhelmed by the crisis. We should much rather turn back and find the right path on which it once became strong.

Social scientists and historians say that every civilisation has two fundamental resources. One of these is human resources, in other words, work and producing values. The other is the stability of established values, the awareness of permanence, namely, that certain values never change, so there is always something to lean on, and bearings in every situation.

There are cultural and moral traditions, roots the human community can draw on over and over again. In the case of Europe this is Christian culture. What made Europe really strong in the previous hundreds of years can be summarised as follows: Ora et labora – which means: Let us pray and work. This was the slogan of the Benedictine monks. In modern communication language I would say: Labour and Christian culture. This is what made Europe a great, pioneering civilisation. By the end of the 20th century, we got to the point where Europe simply falsified its own history, with the reference to Christian traditions left out of the European constitution. But this is not the only thing Europe denied. It equally denied work, its other fundamental resource. What I am now speaking about is perhaps not perceivable, not understandable and does not make sense to somebody who has a more traditional way of thinking. In the 70s and in the 80s, the West started deceiving itself that scientific and technological development, machines and money would solve everything for us. They believed that it was possible to live in a greater prosperity by working less. In the 80s, leading Western European and American thinkers and state leaders espoused the idea that on a quarter of society is actually needed for prosperity in the developed countries of Western Europe; the remaining part is somehow unnecessary. This is how Europe turned its back on its two civilisation resources, the value-producing work carried out by its own citizens in its own region and Christian cultural traditions.

To put things very simply, in my view this is what lead to Europe becoming weaker.  Although alarming signals have appeared recently, we have been trying to change for a while, but so far we have been unable to compete with these changes. Instead of that, exciting, but tense, and sometimes stormy political disputes are underway. My point is, Europe is capable of taking its own fate in its own hands if it builds on its own traditions and values, namely: human dignity, freedom and obligations, where merit is based on work and where natural human communities and relationships, like the family and the nation, are respected. Europe doesn’t need more rules, but rather more trust, more opportunity and some fresh air. Europe needs to be liberated from liberal distrust and the limitations of greed left to roam free.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let me say a few words about Hungary. We Hungarians are often said to be the most Western Easterners, and the most Eastern Westerners. That refers to our origin. It may be true, and this provides an explanation of why even modern Hungary has been open and has been interested in what happens in the East. It explains why we have always had – as mentioned by the previous speaker – numbers of scientists and artists who were in touch with you. What is furthermore worth knowing about Hungarians is that we speak a language spoken by no one else in the world. This language creates a special way of thinking which ends up in special results. It is enough to say, that Hungarians invented the computer, the ballpoint pen, and the espresso coffee machine. Not a bad composition, I think.

I would say that we are a freedom-loving, proud, hard-headed and passionate but friendly people. In 2010, an extraordinary situation occurred in Hungary. A political community – namely ours – gained two-thirds of the seats in Parliament. Hungary is a parliamentarian democracy, so we received the strongest possible legitimacy for the administration. We began to completely overhaul the system in Hungary by placing work and Christian values at the fore. We applied a series of so-called unconventional solutions. We began to transform the economy, the state and its sub-systems in the same spirit.

Allow me to point out that Hungary was at the edge of bankruptcy when we took office in 2010 and was even rated a country of higher risk than Greece. This was just 3 years ago. But we succeeded in driving the budget deficit down to below 3% on a sustainable basis, and we have a primary surplus in our budget. We are one of the few countries in Europe now in which sovereign debt has decreased, from 85% to 77%. As a guarantee, the new constitution sets the debt ceiling at 50% and declares that Parliament cannot adopt any budget that increases government debt. We reduced the number of politicians by nearly 50%: we reduced the number of local councillors by 45%, and the number of MPs by 50%. As a consequence, following the next elections the size of the Hungarian Parliament will be just half its current size. We introduced a flat rate 16% personal income tax combined with a generous family tax credit system. We also decreased the corporate tax rate for small and medium enterprises to 10 %. We introduced one of Europe’s most flexible labour codes with the concurrent support of both the major trade unions and employers’ associations. We are confident that these measures will give a boost to the already remarkably competitive economy of Hungary. 50% of our exports are high tech and high-quality manufacturing related, resulting in a 2% annual current account surplus in recent years – which is a good figure in European context. According to the Harvard University-developed Economic Complexity Index, the sophistication and complexity of Hungarian exports rank 14th globally. We have a good reason to think that growth, which has begun after all these changes, will remain sustainable in the long run.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Now comes the point which may explain why we are here in India. This official visit is not a protocol visit. We came here to present you a message. The message reads as follows: We ask you to draw Central Europe on your map. The European Union with a population of 500 million is struggling badly. But there is a significant territory, with a population of 80 million and with a very promising outlook, which is called Central Europe, and Hungary is part of it. The greatest potential for European growth is to be found in this region. This territory offers good opportunities to investors; logistically this is probably the best point from which to reach the huge market of the European Union. This region is already over the crisis; it has renewed itself successfully and it is now competitive with newly emerging economies and nations. To put it very simply: we are back on the map and we are ready to play a win-win game with the most competitive economies of the world. I wish good luck to all of us in utilising this historical opportunity.

Thank you for your kind attention.

(Prime Minister’s Office)