With the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and every subsequent event, Europe and Hungary have entered an “era of dangers,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned after taking his fifth oath as prime minister in parliament on Monday.
Orbán’s conservative Fidesz party won the April 3 general election with its fourth consecutive two-thirds majority and has been at the helm of Hungary for half of the time that has passed since the regime change in 1990.
“Everything that has happened since 2020 points in one direction: Europe and the Hungarian people in it have entered an age of danger. The decade began with the coronavirus epidemic and continued with the war. The sanctions from the war brought an economic downturn,” Orbán said. “The war and sanctions policy caused an energy crisis, and U.S. interest rate hikes brought an age of inflation.”
“All of this will bring the age of economic downturn, threatening epidemics may recur, migration may deepen and may intensify,” he added.
The Hungarian leader emphasized that the picture of an unfolding decade of war includes the “suicide waves of the Western world.”
“Such is the program of the great European population exchange, the essence of which is to replace the missing Christian children with migrants. Such an experiment is a program of gender madness and a liberal Europe that transcends nation-states and Christianity, and puts nothing in their place.
“They forget that man alone can never be free, only lonely,” Orbán warned.
“We are simultaneously plagued by economic woes, war, the intellectual weakness of Europe, and the political fallacy of Brussels. In this situation, we have to set the route for Hungary, and if we set it, we have to embark upon it, and then keep our country on this road with a steady hand.
“It is a difficult task, but we can succeed. We can succeed because the Hungarians were carved out of hard wood, so we stubbornly resist the decline,” the Hungarian prime minister added.
Orbán added that he was particularly counting on the support of the communities of the traditional churches.
“We will provide the conditions for preaching the gospel. We see a growing demand for church institutions, and helping them will be important,” he said, adding that “Hungarians across the border can count on us, we will continue our work of national unification.”
