‘Hungary today is the voice of the people of Europe,’ Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said at a conference organized by the Századvég Foundation on Monday.

‘Hungary is the only country that speaks the thoughts of Hungarians and Western Europeans,’ he declared. ‘Time has come for change in Europe so that Europeans recapture European institutions,’ the prime minister stated.

Addressing the conference held on the topic of sovereignty, Orbán said Hungary’s international influence is ‘greater than its real weight’ because ‘Europeans can now express their opinion via Hungary’. ‘It is high time the West learned that you cannot live by lies because you will get sick and then die,’ he said.

According to the PM, while ‘lost sovereignty was in the focus of the last century’, Hungary regained its sovereignty at the end of the 20th century, so ‘this decade is about retaining that sovereignty’. The lesson that can be learned from the dissolution of the Socialist bloc and of the Soviet Union, Viktor Orbán suggested, is that ‘it is worth being radical’, recalling the activism and courage of the system-changing Fidesz politicians.

Speaking about liberalism, he said that

while for Western Europeans it was ‘natural’ that the liberals were the new communists, in Hungary that realization came as a shock.

He recalled the forming of the Socialist-liberal coalition government in 1994, describing it as the liberals opening the gate through which the former Communists could leave the quarantine.

He also recalled that Fidesz realized after they lost the election in 2002 that ‘Retaining Hungary‘s sovereignty is solely in the interest of us Hungarians…The world around us is not interested in Hungary’s staying a sovereign country. They will be better off if we partially or fully lose our sovereignty,’ he suggested, adding that Hungary cannot be sovereign as long as public thinking is dominated by ‘a liberal hegemony’.

‘This does not mean that we should eliminate what belongs to our adversaries. What we want is pluralism in Hungary,’ he concluded.

Sources: Hungarian Conservative/MTI