In the interview with commercial broadcaster TV2, Orban said, "Pride is a European political model controlled by Brussels."

If national sovereignty were not protected by the government, "then the same would be the case with migration and Ukraine", he added.

Asked for his opinion on the weekend Pride march, Orban said he could not comment on it "with the credibility of an eyewitness" since he hadn't been there. "What the heck would I have been doing there?" he said, adding that he agreed with those who did not consider the march "pride".

Hungarians gave their opinion on the issue in 2022 in the general election and in a referendum, when they had their say on sexuality for the sake of it, raising children, child protection and "non-traditional lifestyles".

Fully 3.7 million people said "no to [trans]gender", which is what "Pride describes", he said.

More people participated in that referendum and voted the same way than in the ones on Hungary’s NATO and EU accessions or any other referendums, Orban said.

He said it was now clear to Hungarians that whatever was "decided in Brussels" was enforced by the opposition in the capital, with their followers "lined up behind it".

This would be true regarding other issues, too, such as those of migration and Ukraine, he added.

Orban said, at the same time, that there was minor support in Hungary for "the topic of Pride, gender, gender reassignment surgery, same-sex marriage and adoption rights for same-sex couples", arguing that it "brings a few tens of thousands of people out onto the streets", while 190,000 people "voted in favour of gender" in 2022. Many, he added, chose not to vote or cast an invalid vote, but "there are far more who reject this."

"We already decided this once in 2022, and no demonstration or Pride parade will change my view on this matter," the prime minister said.

Orban charged Brussels with aiming to install "a puppet government" to enforce its policies in Hungary and get "Ukraine sympathisers onto the streets".

"Then we're finished," he said. "The country is finished. There's gender, there's migration, and we're up to our jugular in war."

"And now, irrespective of Pride, everyone can see a European political model controlled by Brussels," Orban said. "That’s why Brussels wants to replace the government that defends national sovereignty with a pro-Brussels and pro-Ukrainian one, because then they will be able to carry out everything the way they did at Pride."

As regards Ukraine’s European Union membership, Orban said said the EU was not a security organisation and did not have military capabilities, adding that if the bloc admitted Ukraine it would find itself at war with Russia. "This isn’t hard to see, and Hungarians do see it."

"We understand the Ukrainians; we’re helping them, but we can’t help them by destroying ourselves in the process," the prime minister said. Orban said he had represented a clear position at last week’s European Council summit, adding that it "pained" the other member states that Hungary’s position was not an emotional but a "cold and rational" one.

He noted that he is the longest-serving prime minister in the EU and was the one to negotiate the last phase of Hungary’s NATO accession and the early stages of Hungary’s EU entry. "I know exactly how it happened," he said, noting that a prerequisite of former Soviet bloc countries becoming EU members was first to join NATO, which guaranteed their military security and the location of their eastern borders.

But this guarantee was not in place in the case of Ukraine, he said, arguing that it had been decided that the country would not be admitted to NATO because that would lead to a world war.

So the EU was incapable of securing a future member state’s eastern borders, Orban said. "Ukraine wants to enter the EU when we don’t know its size or where its eastern borders lie," he added.

"If everyone from Ukraine was free to enter Hungary, then the citizens of a country armed to the teeth with highly developed mafia skills and networks would be constantly in and out of Hungary," Orban said. "We’d become a gateway for them and our domestic security would also be in danger."

He added that if Ukraine became an EU member, "all the money would end up there, even though we’re already the ones funding the Ukrainian state, which wouldn’t be able to function without Western money".

At the same time, he said, Ukraine’s president was demanding that the EU finance a one million-strong Ukrainian military in the future and that member states give the country a certain percentage of their GDP so that it could function.

"This isn’t a good idea," Orban said, recommending that instead of giving Ukraine membership, the bloc should sign a strategic agreement with the country on how it would support Ukraine.

 "But they shouldn’t set a legal precedent, allowing Ukraine to drain our money or let businessmen with questionable backgrounds or mobsters come to Hungary and the European Union." He said the EU should also sign an agreement that rules out any participation on its part in the war.

Orban said he was not saying that the EU should "forget about Ukraine" or that it should not support the country, but that "we shouldn’t support them by destroying ourselves in the process."

Orban said at the NATO summit in Washington a year ago everyone "except us" talked up arming Ukraine and admitting the country to NATO, but a year later "there was no mention of this" at the latest NATO gathering.

During the recent NATO summit, the US president made clear "that he is pro-peace", he said.

NATO, he added, was not formed to wage war but to defend and establish peace, adding that Ukraine must not become a member of the alliance as there was "no question of NATO getting involved" in Ukraine-Russia war.

Instead, the alliance, Orban said, must focus on making itself stronger and "our own lives safer".

A new situation had emerged, he said. "At last there's somewhere, NATO, where we have won." Hungary had turned its "isolated, losing position" into the "stronger, majority position", alongside the US, Turkiye, and Slovakia, "a serious group".

It was important that a majority in NATO should believe that a war with Russia "could lead us to a third world war" if the alliance intervened on the side of Ukraine.
 

NATO "has not yet reached that point", he said, adding that it was necessary to talk to Russia and reach an agreement lest there be an arms race.

There was no point in a competition of strength and spending money on arms and building up an army when it could be spent elsewhere, he said.
 

"Sooner or later NATO and Russia must come to an agreement which would determine the volume of armaments on the battlefield and military spending, otherwise the sky's the limit".

Orban said the big players would decide the matter, though some could share "experiences of our own personal lives" with the heavy-hitters.

"An arms race ruined our world once already. This brought down the communists and ended the Soviet Union, so it was beneficial, too. But massive amounts of money and energy were wasted on an needless arms race. Now we're free and we belong to the West, we have no interest in repeating this," the prime minister said.

Meanwhile, referring to Hungarian astronaut Tibor Kapu, the prime minister noted Hungary had produced two Nobel laureates and an astronaut in the past two years. "Hungary's reputation abroad is higher today than it was before" owing to "these excellent people", he said.

Hadhazy: Opposition 'should finally be proud'

Hungary's opposition "should finally be proud, because they have embarrassed the powers that be and made them ridiculous," independent lawmaker Akos Hadhazy told a demonstration held in downtown Budapest on Tuesday.

At the 16th protest calling for the withdrawal of the law on the right of free assembly and against the adoption of the transparency law, Hadhazy said that the Budapest Pride held last Saturday had been the largest anti-government protest ever and the largest mass protest held since the fall of communism, "because it is perfectly obvious that this was an anti-government demonstration."

Hadházy said the demonstration had shown strength. At the same time, strength will not prevail without perseverance and determination, he said, "but the greatest achievement of the past months is that the opposition has shown both, and that is scaring the powers that be."

Hadhazy said demonstrators will march to the Interior Ministry, demanding that the "techno-fascist law be withdrawn and the police does not use the footage of Saturday's demonstration."

He insisted that the police was facing a "dilemma". "If I had to bet today, I'd bet on fines being imposed."

"The powers that be have made a huge mistake, but we can't afford to another one and stop now."

Sociologist Andras Bozoki said last Saturday's demonstration had created a new situation "where the regime has backed down, it couldn't use violence."

"There is a lot of talk of how it will want to derail free elections by any means possible, through drones, photos, surveillance, threats and punishment, but I believe that if the people decide that they have no patience or need [for this] ... and want to take their fate in their hands again, then nothing can stop them."

Musician Miklos Paizs said that on Saturday, "pensioners with their hearts in the right place became anti-government rebels because they took to the streets for the rights of their stigmatised fellow humans ... even taking a fine into account."

"The incessant gangster moves have turned masses of peaceful citizens into rebels," Paizs said.

Slammer and dramaturge Denes Biro said the demonstration had been a "joint success that helped us experience a feeling of belonging together."

Karacsony: No one can be legally penalised for standing up for freedom

No one can be legally penalised for standing up for their freedom and the freedom of others, Gergely Karacsony, the mayor of Budapest, said on Tuesday, responding to a post by Prime Minister Viktor Orban in the members-only "Fight Club" Facebook group.

"The best response to the prime minister's latest battle cry, yet another threat made to participants of the largest freedom march of the past decades, is a smile -- which is what sums up the whole of Saturday's wonderful celebration," Karacsony wrote in a post on Facebook forwarded to MTI.

He said he would "guarantee" that no participant of the march would face legal repercussions as a result of taking part in the Pride event.

The mayor said in the post: "How many more people must there be so that they understand freedom and love can neither be banned nor punished?"

Meanwhile, Official: Brussels spending EUR 1.5 bn on 'gender sensitisation'

Brussels is spending 1.5 billion euros "on campaigns similar to the gender sensitisation seen at last weekend's Pride march," the prime minister's political director said in a video uploaded to Facebook.

Referring to a recent visit by European Union Commissioner Hadja Lahbib to Hungary, Balazs Orban said the European politician "did not come to Hungary to speak about what is important to Hungarians but to inform the public ... that 1.5 billion euros in European taxpayers' money was available for campaigns similar to the gender sensitisation seen at last weekend's Pride". "Isn't that appalling," he added.

While farmers are being impoverished in Europe and ventures go bankrupt, and "even in the once opulent Western Europe they don't have money for anything ... there comes somebody saying that they have 1.5 billion euros just for naked men to expose themselves to small children," Orban said, adding that it was equal to "clear interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign country".

"European taxpayers' money must not be spent on gender sensitisation... We cannot let that happen," he said. The Patriot party group and the Hungarian government will "do everything to ensure that the money of European taxpayers is spent on meaningful, decent things rather than used to finance the gender [ideology]," Orban added.

Source: MTI – Hungary’s national news agency since 1881. While MTI articles are usually factual, some may contain political bias, and readers should be aware that such content does not reflect the position of XpatLoop, which is neutral and independent.

Since the goal of XpatLoop is to keep readers well briefed, right across the spectrum of opinions, MTI items are shared to ensure readers are aware of all narratives within the local media.

XpatLoop believes in empowering readers to form their own views through complete and comprehensive coverage. To facilitate this XpatLoop has a balanced range of news partners, as you can see when you surf around XpatLoop.com

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