Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said Europe must clarify its position in the global economy and the related consequences during a panel discussion with other prime ministers from the region at the Bled Strategic Forum in Slovenia on Monday, according to a report by state news wire MTI.
Orbán said Europe is “in trouble” as “we havenʼt identified our new position in the global economy”.
He said Europe is no longer a “game-changer”, as are China and the United States, and needs to “clarify” its position and the consequences.
He explained that the “science center” of the modern economy is “related very much to the armies”, and because there is no European army, “we donʼt have the scientific center to be at the forefront of technological advancement”.
Orbán said a common military capacity, enlargement, and a competitive economy, with Central Europe as an engine of growth, are key to Europeʼs strategy for the future.
“Without enlarging the European Union and accepting Serbia as a full member we cannot complete the security architecture of Europe,” he argued.
Addressing questions on concerns over the state of democracy in Hungary, Orbán insisted that Hungaryʼs democracy is of the same quality as those of Germanyʼs or Italyʼs.
“The problem is not the member states and the political systems…the problem is that we donʼt have strong common policies on the three major areas: global competition, good economies, and security enlargement,” he said.
He said a “kind of fight for intellectual sovereignty” is going on in Hungary today, more so than in other countries.
“We are fighting for the sovereignty to have a Christian and democratic approach to the European institutions and politics as such,” he said.
He acknowledged that liberal and conservative political philosophies had been unified in their fight against the totalitarian regime but stressed that the two philosophies are distinct.
“We would like to get back to the age, intellectually, when we can dispute clearly the main values, like family, nation, cultural tradition, religion, migration…We would like to have not just one single concept which must be accepted by everybody, because we donʼt have a liberal concept [for] that, we have a Christian democratic concept [for] all these issues,” he said.
