Speaking at an event celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Belvárosi Polgári Szalon in downtown Budapest, Orbán said the salon was an example for other such communities in the country: “We must build communities like that everywhere; this way, our opponents will never be able to push Hungary from the path of growth,” Bertalan Havasi cited Orbán as saying.

District 5 mayor Péter Szentgyörgyvölgyi and cabinet chief Antal Rogán also attended the event.

Orbán: Hungarians ‘Free to Decide Their Fate’

Hungarians today are free to decide their fate without any outside influence, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told a meeting of the ruling parties’ parliamentary groups.

The prime minister identified the “Soros empire, the Brussels bureaucracy and their allies” as Hungary’s opponents from whom the country’s sovereignty had to be defended.

“They’re the ones who will attack our economic sovereignty, want to eliminate our cultural sovereignty and want to take away our political sovereignty,” he said.

Orbán said the attacks against Hungary’s economic sovereignty came in the form of a push to have utility price caps scrapped and protecting multinationals so that they are free to raise prices “and make a profit off the Hungarian people”.

Hungary’s opponents also want to strip the country of the power to protect families, he said.

“And if all this wasn’t enough, they want to let GMO-contaminated grain onto the Hungarian market at dumping prices,” Orbán said.

“And they also want to tell us where we can by our energy from and for how much.” Hungary’s cultural sovereignty is under threat from the push to force migrants onto Hungary and set up “Europe’s largest migrant ghetto here”, the prime minister said.

“They want to force their gender ideology onto us, and they also want to be the ones to tell us how our universities should function and what can be taught there, even shutting out Hungarian students from joint European scholarship programmes in order to reach their goals,” he said.

The “obviously unlawful” withholding of funds from Hungary is an attack against the country’s political sovereignty, the paper cited Orbán as saying.

Meanwhile, Hungary is being forced to make payments to Ukraine, “moreover they would admit Ukraine into the EU without any debate even though it meets none of the criteria set for other member states”, he said.

The prime minister also cited the “shameless foreign intervention in Hungarian public life” through monies sent from abroad.

The fight for Hungary’s freedom will not just be decided in Brussels or in the US, but also in Hungary itself, in the cities and towns, the prime minister said.

The supporters of the global elite are to be fined not only among the Brussels elite or the American Democrats, but they are also there in a host of Hungarian cities and towns, he said, pointing out the example of “uncontrolled Budapest where traffic jams, dirt and chaos reign”.

“And there’s also the pseudo-civil groups and the self-proclaimed independent local media that have sprung out of nowhere and aim to create tensions and scaremonger against nationally-minded local councils,” Orbán said.

They are all financed from Brussels or through the “Soros network” to set up “garrisons” where nationally-minded forces are in power, he added.

The prime minister said that at stake in next year’s European Parliament and local elections was preserving Hungary’s sovereignty.

PM: Opponents ‘Targeting Hungary Sovereignty’

Hungary's opponents want to use the crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine to force a return to the era of former prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told a meeting of MPs of ruling Fidesz and Christian Democrats.

The coming year will be about these opponents trying to “bring Hungary to its knees and take away its sovereignty”, the daily Magyar Nemzet cited Orbán as telling the meeting in Esztergom, in northern Hungary, on Wednesday.

“The stakes this year are extremely high because the Soros empire, bolstered by the governing Democrats in the US are launching an attack against the right-wing media … in the majority of European countries,” Orbán said.

“It’s clear that in America, where this matters, they want to send [former US president Donald] Trump straight to prison so that he doesn’t threaten the power of [US financier George] Soros and the Democrats,” he said.

“The globalists need the European Commission and the US president, and Hungary is the thorn in their side on the way there.” He said the reason for this was that “Hungary is the freest country in Europe today”.

There is a fence on the country’s border and there is family policy instead of immigration, he said.

Schools are free of “gender ideology”, Hungary does not deliver weapons to Ukraine and does not want to get dragged into the war, he said.

Gyurcsány: 'There Is an Alternative to Incumbent Gov’t'

Opposition parties need to show Hungarians that there is an alternative to the incumbent government and that it is possible to build a different state, the leader of the opposition Democratic Coalition (DK) told a rally on Friday.

DK has set its tasks driven by the realisation that the country needs a new government, fair politics, competent and trustworthy women and men, Ferenc Gyurcsány said.

“We need to create a country that does not want to fight a war with ghosts and falsehoods, a country that wants to create peace in its own affairs, in human relationships, and in the world,” he said.

He said they wanted a country that “sought friends, partners and others countries to cooperate with”. He asked people “to take back their own state”.

Gyurcsány, who was prime minister between 2004 and 2009, criticised incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as a leader under whose tenure the country’s economy had been shattered and the people had slipped into an existential crisis.

Concerning economic problems, Gyurcsány said that the purchasing value of the forint was deteriorating at a faster rate than that of any other national or the common currency in Europe and the average rate of inflation would be higher this year than in 2022.

In reaction to the DK leader’s speech, the group-leader of ruling Fidesz said Hungary does not want the Gyurcsány era, saying that that government had stripped Hungarians of one month’s pension and wages.

It also scrapped family allowances and pushed the country into near bankruptcy, Máté Kocsis said.

“That government was commanded from abroad, sold out the country’s national assets and obeyed the orders of the multinational companies,” Kocsis said on Facebook.

Gyurcsány’s speech launched a campaign dictated by the international left “which wants a different Hungary”, one that is “obviously pro-migration and pro-war, and is swamped in a gender-madness”, one that “wants to be seen as an eminent country in the eyes of the liberals of Brussels and the United States”. “The bad news for them is this: We will not let that happen!” Kocsis said.